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Copyright N ?_ Co 

COPYRIGHT DEPOStn 


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A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR: 

GIRL OR BOY: A Satire 
and a Diversion 


A COMEDY OF 
WOMEN 

By JOHN NORTH 



BOSTON 

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 



Copyright, 1926 

By SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 

(Incorporated) 



Printed in the United States of America 


THE MURRAY PRINTING COMPANY 
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 

THE BOSTON BOOKBINDING COMPANY 
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 



Cl A 9 01 -181 







TO 

FREDA 


THIS SECOND DIVERSION 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTEH 


I. 

Breakdown .... 

9 

II. 

Mr. Figgins .... 

24 

III. 

Marjorie’s News . 

42 

IV. 

Mrs. Meadows Breaks Out . 

63 

V. 

The March of Fame 

87 

VI. 

Mr. Randal Frere . 

105 

VII. 

Christina at Home . 

122 

VIII. 

Mrs. Godfrey Jobb . 

145 

IX. 

Mrs. Cushion’s Encounter . 

164 

X. 

Godfrey in Eclipse 

182 

XI. 

Christina’s Quest . 

208 

XII. 

Morning in Duke Street . 

231 

XIII. 

Rencontre .... 

252 

XIV. 

Lethe. 

278 













CHAPTER I 


BREAKDOWN 

T AST night Marjorie had seen the new 
moon through glass. 

“ Oh, damn!” she had softly murmured 
with a pretty emphasis, the charm of which 
however, at that particular moment, had en¬ 
tirely escaped him. “ That means that I 
shan’t have any luck this month, and I did 
want it so badly!” 

Whereupon he had pointed out, for at least 
the fortieth time in his married career, that 
the antique superstition to which she referred 
was unworthy of the credence of an intelligent 
woman; and that, apart from any question of 
its validity, it was certainly never intended to 
apply to the windscreen of a modern two- 
seater. 

“ Very well,” she had commented; and 
after withdrawing into her own corner of the 
car had added ominously: “You will see!” 

In reply to this confident warning he had 
trod violently on the accelerator and stared 
malevolently at the vexatious moon. God¬ 
frey Jobb, indeed, did not belie the etymo¬ 
logical derivation of his Christian name. 
Pre-eminently he was a man of peace, and 
as soon as he was able to do so without loss 
of dignity he reopened the conversation, with 

9 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

a change of subject; and hoped that for a 
month at least he had heard the last of that 
infernal moon. 

But this morning, although he had not been 
out of bed for much more than an hour, his 
mind had already reverted to the incident. 
He had always sternly regulated the manner 
of his existence, and this morning it was not 
proceeding with its accustomed smoothness; 
the divine progression of events had been 
acutely disturbed. For the first time he had 
tried a new two-guinea safety-razor; he had 
been led to suppose that its only defect was 
that it made shaving too brief a pleasure, and 
so safe that a babe unborn might be entrusted 
with it. Godfrey, ordinarily a man of peace, 
had savagely and speedily arrived at the con¬ 
clusion that it was the most lethal weapon he 
had ever held in his hand, not excepting the 
pistol he had brandished—but never fired—in 
the last Big Push in the last Great War. One 
particular whoop he had given in the bath¬ 
room during this painful experiment ought, he 
felt, to have aroused the neighbourhood: only 
Godfrey didn’t happen to live in any “ neigh¬ 
bourhood ”; he lived twenty-five miles from 
town, in the midst of green fields, and a 
quarter of an hour’s walk from the station. 
Nevertheless, he felt distinctly aggrieved that 
10 


BREAKDOWN 


this terrific whoop, born of exasperation 
rather than mere physical pain, had not served 
to arouse Marjorie from her late morning 
slumbers; it was positively indecent of her to 
have remained peacefully asleep during those 
ten agonising minutes. Of course he had 
been late for breakfast, five minutes late; 
which meant that he had been compelled to 
forego a second cup of coffee; and he well 
knew, from years of experience, that this 
second cup was absolutely essential to the 
normal operation of his digestive processes. 
Nor was this all: the staple food of that meal 
had proved to be dried haddock; and long 
ago Godfrey had determined that if ever he 
were asked to consume a duller and more 
enervating food than dried haddock he would 
expire halfway through the meal from sheer 
ennui. He was fair enough not to put the 
blame on Marjorie, who had pleasant ideas on 
the advisability of varying his diet; and he 
had never had courage enough to tell her that 
he didn’t want his diet varied, and desired 
nothing better than plain eggs and bacon 
through all eternity. He slammed the garden 
gate behind him. 

Once on the open road he came under the 
more enlivening influence of the fresh morn¬ 
ing air; he had even the inclination to note 

11 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


that the rising autumn sun had already put a 
glint on the green of the hedgerows; within 
another two minutes, had events gone accord¬ 
ing to programme, Godfrey would once more 
have been at peace with the world. But it was 
at this precise moment that he was rudely 
shaken out of that delicious spell which 
Nature had imposed upon him. Around the 
corner a few hundred yards ahead a figure had 
just disappeared, and in the very moment of 
its disappearance that figure had started to 
run. Godfrey glanced at his wrist watch. 
Like everything else about the man, that 
watch was utterly reliable; he had been 
abroad for weeks at a time and never had 
occasion to alter it on his return; that watch 
was one of the sheet-anchors of his well-regu¬ 
lated existence. But this morning an unac¬ 
countable and quite unprecedented doubt 
seized him as to this servant’s veracity. If 
the watch were right he had just enough time 
in which to get to the station; if it were even 
half a minute out he would probably lose the 
train. He hated the idea of missing the 
train; it would mean a wait of nearly three- 
quarters of an hour; but he hated even more 
intensely the idea of breaking out into a gen¬ 
tle trot. He was getting on for forty, and he 
was resolved never to do anything likely to 
12 


BREAKDOWN 


impair the excellence of that digestive system 
with which he had been born. When he 
reached the corner his precursor was out of 
sight, and Godfrey felt as if he had come up 
against some dreadful gap in creation. He 
almost halted in the anxiety of the moment. 
There was an appointment at the office, he 
suddenly remembered, which he must infal¬ 
libly keep. He glanced back. Three staid 
City magnates were following his footsteps, 
without apparent apprehension; but the sight 
of them hardly consoled Godfrey; he had a 
tantalising vision of the man ahead boarding 
the train in the nick of time; and without 
wasting breath on the innocuous oath that 
almost rose to his lips he ran, and ran hard. 
It gave him some satisfaction to know that 
the three staid City magnates in the rear had 
caught from him the same contagion of doubt, 
and were running, and running hard. 

The total result of this effort was that he 
arrived at the station at least a minute too 
soon. He arrived a little breathless, some¬ 
what rumpled in his person, and very much 
ruffled in his feelings. He had never known 
such a morning for years past. He glared 
surreptitiously at a passenger at the other end 
of the platform whom he believed responsible 
for this precipitate flight; and he was further 

13 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


annoyed to note that his breathing appeared 
to be almost normal. Thankfully the arrival 
of the train interrupted the dark course of his 
meditations; and heaven was kind to him, in 
that he was able to obtain his customary cor¬ 
ner seat: had he been deprived of it on this 
morning of all mornings, he would have 
crumpled up under this last indignity of a 
malignant fate. This morning, in fact, he 
did rather better than usual: for ten minutes 
he would have the whole of a first-class com¬ 
partment to himself, and he straightway set 
about restoring the equanimity of his mind 
and the perfection of his person. He first 
removed from his lean and somewhat lengthy 
face, which despite the remissness of the two- 
guinea razor was obviously clean-shaven, the 
signs of incipient perspiration; next he flicked 
the dust from his patent shoes and firmly 
embedded the knot of his tie in the niche 
provided in his stiff white collar; and finally 
removed from his attache case his copy of 
the Times. With this on his lap and a pipe 
in one hand and a tobacco pouch in the other, 
Godfrey was prepared to survey the world and 
find it good. 

But no, there was something wrong with 
the world this morning. For one thing, that 
deep breath of satisfaction he was wont to gain 
14 


BREAKDOWN 


from the first pipe of the day, this morning 
entirely eluded him; that last desperate and 
unnecessary sprint to the station had deprived 
him of one of the chief of the few recurring 
pleasures of his existence. He frowned, and 
opened the Times at the leader page. His 
manner of reading this journal had long ago 
become a ritual. He glanced down the list of 
letters to the editor, making a mental note of 
those he proposed to read, scanned the con¬ 
tents column, and proceeded steadfastly to 
read through the summary of the day’s news. 
The close examination of this summary never 
failed to give him enormous satisfaction; 
within the space of two or three minutes he 
was able to assure himself that he was per¬ 
fectly cognisant of the latest phenomena in the 
world of men and affairs; and if by any chance 
he were to be hurled at a moment’s notice into 
the next world he was glad to know that he 
would take the latest news of this world with 
him. The summary having been read, he felt 
that he was at liberty, at any subsequent 
moment, to avert his gaze to the restful green 
of the receding landscape. And this he did on 
this particular morning rather earlier than 
usual. The letters to the editor from distin¬ 
guished personages were, if anything, even 
more pompously dull than the leading articles. 

15 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

Certainly the journal was giving considerable 
prominence to a racy correspondence on the 
subject of “ Deep Breathing as an Aid to 
Golf but the pleasure to be derived from it 
was somewhat evanescent, and early on in 
the journey to town the paper lay neglected 
on Godfrey’s immaculate trousers. 

Godfrey, in fact, and quite unaccountably, 
had suddenly become deeply thoughtful; he 
was even oblivious of the presence of two 
gentlemen who had entered his compartment 
at the first and only stop and were breaking 
all the traditions of this select route by indulg¬ 
ing in amiable conversation; more surpris¬ 
ingly still, he began to sense some impending 
disaster. Disaster was an almost unknown 
word in the vocabulary of Godfrey’s placid 
career. Early on in that career he had mar¬ 
ried a most excellent wife, a charming com¬ 
panion, under whose skilful direction his 
household was conducted with such smooth¬ 
ness of organism that it appeared to run of 
its own accord. The periodical appearance of 
dried haddock on the breakfast table was the 
one blot on this panorama of perfection; and 
he was quite prepared, in normal times, to 
suffer gladly this occasional martyrdom. In 
normal times, yes; but what he now sensed 
was a period of abnormality, and for the life 
16 


BREAKDOWN 


of him he could not understand why. His 
business was flourishing; his income was ris¬ 
ing; several years had elapsed since it had 
passed the thousand a year mark, and in a 
few more it would probably reach five. Cer¬ 
tainly in that direction there was no hint of 
disaster. Nor in Marjorie herself could he 
detect any sort of change, nor any threat of 
change. During the past months they had 
continued to dine with the correct people and 
to do the right shows in town; and to the best 
of his observation she had not suddenly grown 
weary of this tranquil round. Of course she 
was some years younger than himself, and he 
did not flatter himself that he was able to 
discern the uttermost depths of her woman’s 
soul; it had never occurred to him to compli¬ 
cate his existence by attempting any such 
foolhardy feat. From a similar motive he had 
always refrained from taking any notice of 
the least explicable of her moods: when, for 
instance, she had asked him whether he could 
not find her a job in town, so that she could 
contribute something to the world’s work. He 
had heard other married women—so far as he 
knew, not less happily married than his own 
wife—express this same heretical desire. He 
had no patience with such nonsense, and when 
Marjorie had succumbed to it he had not 

17 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


even troubled to argue with her; he had just 
patted her on the head and told her to run 
away and get dressed for dinner. Perhaps, 
on reflection, he ought to have delivered to 
her a little homily on the woman’s sphere in 
man’s life, and so on. After all, one never 
knew for certain what was going on behind 
the gateways of a woman’s brain; and even 
his own Marjorie . . . 

“Oh, damn everything this morning!” he 
muttered angrily as he stepped on to the 
arrival platform, and nearly throttled the 
ticket collector who subjected his season 
ticket to a microscopic examination. 

But the worst disaster of all came last. On 
this morning of all mornings the Underground 
Railway chose to have a breakdown. Some¬ 
where between Piccadilly Circus and Trafal¬ 
gar Square the velocity of the train in which 
he was travelling languished and almost im¬ 
mediately expired; the silence of the dead 
supervened. A half-minute pause was not 
unendurable; anything over it was unthink¬ 
able; but the minutes laboriously passed and 
still the pause continued, until every second 
became an age and every minute an aeon. 
He had nothing whatsoever to read; he had 
not brought up with him the papers he had 
taken home in his attache case the night 
18 


BREAKDOWN 


before; he had left his Times in the other 
train; he had not even a letter to linger over, 
the postman having informed him on the way 
to the station that there was nothing for him, 
“ except ha’pennies.” The silence began to 
grow on his nerves; it was growing on every¬ 
one’s nerves. There they were, buried in the 
bowels of the earth, cut off from the busy 
world above by impenetrable strata. To the 
left of him and to the right of him he could 
see the double line of roof lights converging 
down ghostly corridors, tombs of the living- 
dead in the deep vault of earth! He shud¬ 
dered, and thought, “ This is the nearest 
thing possible to hell, a glittering hell!” and 
scrutinised the faces of his fellow-passengers. 
Even as the current on the line had failed, so 
every trace of animation had vanished from 
their faces; they were waiting, stupidly, va¬ 
cantly, for the stream of life to resume its flow. 
He looked at their faces, one by one. Never 
before had he so closely examined the human 
species; and it was an affrightening revelation. 
In the still glitter of the electric refulgence 
overhead the men and the women around him 
seemed to be nothing but elongated and con¬ 
torted bags of skin and bone, variously, curi¬ 
ously, pitifully clothed. An abiding weariness 
rested in their eyes; a weariness of all the 

19 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

responsibilities and the anxieties that life 
above ground inferred. He found it hard to 
realise that these patient animals were his fel¬ 
low-creatures, and that he was, after all, one 
with them. . . . And then the train moved, 
sprang forward with a splendid velocity, and 
he was back to norm. “ Curious experience, 
that,” he thought; it had quite shaken him. 
What was the matter with the world this 
morning? Marjorie had said: 

“ You will see!” 

“Oh, rot!” he ejaculated as he good- 
humouredly allowed himself to be bundled 
into the lift; and began to think that life 
wasn’t such a bad show after all. 

He arrived at his offices in Watling Street 
over half an hour late, and he was half-way 
up the narrow winding staircase that led to a 
rickety third floor before he realised that he 
had kept his important visitor waiting for 
nearly twenty minutes. The last few steps he 
took three at a time, and he flung open the 
door leading to the outer room with a violence 
that quite startled the pale-faced girl behind 
the counter. This precipitate invasion on the 
part of the head of the firm was something 
out of the run of his general behaviour. She 
diagnosed a row at home; or perhaps it was 
just “nerves”; she was fond of ascribing 
20 


BREAKDOWN 


almost any phenomenon, physical or mental, 
to “ nerves.” 

“ Is Mr. Figgins here?” he asked in a stage 
whisper, though he looked as if he wanted to 
shout. 

The pale-faced girl nodded. She had now 
been with the firm for three years, and never 
once had its chief failed to say good-morning 
to her, with that pleasant smoothness of tone 
which characterised his every utterance. This 
condition of affairs was unprecedented; it 
was alarming. 

“ Fve put him in your room,” she an¬ 
nounced, with an unwonted refinement of 
accent that was intended to communicate the 
annoyance she felt; and added, quite casually, 
as Godfrey put his hand on the door: 

“ Mrs. Jobb has been on the ’phone for 
you three times already this morning.” 

It was a startling pronouncement, and she 
derived a malicious satisfaction from the 
knowledge that it was startling. Godfrey 
looked at her as if she had just passed sen¬ 
tence of death upon him. Marjorie on the 
’phone for him three times at this hour in the 
morning! In the ordinary way, if he knew 
anything at all about her habits, she would 
just about have been thinking about break¬ 
fast. Good Lord! What had happened? 


21 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

“ Get on to my home at once,” he sternly 
directed the placid creature, who was slowly 
sorting out a few letters. “At once!” 

Despite the objurgations he lavished on the 
deficiencies of the telephone service, the num¬ 
ber took at least six minutes to come through; 
and meanwhile Mr. Figgins was kept waiting. 
But Godfrey was beyond the point of caring 
about Mr. Figgins’s welfare; he would jolly 
well have to wait, though he thoroughly well 
realised that that gentleman’s pardonable im¬ 
patience might cost him dearly before the 
morning was out. Thank heavens, the num¬ 
ber at last, and Marjorie at the other end of 
the line. 

“Hullo! Hullo!” 

“ Is that you, darling?” 

“ Yes, yes,” muttered her husband impa¬ 
tiently. This was no time surely for super¬ 
fluous endearments. “ What’s the matter?” 

“ Nothing’s the matter,” drawled Marjorie. 
“ Only I was quite wrong about that old 
moon.” 

“ For God’s sake-” stuttered Godfrey. 

“ I’ll tell you all about it this evening,” 
continued Marjorie, sweetly. “ Meet me at 
the usual place at half-past six.” 

“ But, look here, Marjorie. . . .” Godfrey 
shuffled his feet in desperation. 

22 



BREAKDOWN 


“ At half-past six,” concluded Marjorie with 
a terrifying emphasis. 

“Damn!” muttered Godfrey into the dis¬ 
passionate microphone. 

“ Nerves,” murmured the pale-faced girl 
behind the counter, continuing to sort out her 
papers. 

“ Good-morning, Mr. Jobb,” said Mr. Fig- 
gins as Godfrey at last staggered into the 
room. “ I’m afraid that I have some most 
unpleasant news to communicate to you.” 


23 


CHAPTER II 


MR. FIGGINS 

M R. FIGGINS was a short fat gentleman 
with a pleasant face. Had it not been 
for the comfortable goodness of his clothes 
he might easily have been mistaken for an 
old-time innkeeper, a prosperous butcher, or a 
retired Cabinet Minister. He was the Chair¬ 
man of three important finance corporations; 
he had a seat on the Board of fifteen compa¬ 
nies—ranging from cheap City restaurants 
and provincial Picture Palaces to breweries 
and banks; he had a controlling interest in 
three West End theatres, owned three North 
of England newspapers, and was notoriously 
worth over half a million pounds. On one 
occasion he had stood for Parliament in his 
native town, and had polled about one-tenth 
of the total number of votes cast. Thereafter 
he had wisely chosen to serve the political 
interests of the country, and his own, by less 
direct methods known only to himself and a 
few beneficiaries at Westminster. His pro¬ 
clivity for making money, and yet more 
money, was positively unfortunate; it accumu¬ 
lated so quickly that he spent half his life 
in getting rid of it, in the right quarters; 
even so, more often than not it would come 
tumbling back on him, with a ninefold in- 

24 


MR. FIGGINS 


crease. He spent sleepless nights wondering 
how on earth he could reduce his distressing 
credit balance at the bank without violating 
the sanctity of his financial conscience. Occa¬ 
sionally, when his state of desperation was 
more than ordinarily pitiful, he would donate 
a few thousand pounds to a fashionable 
charity; indeed, in his time he had con¬ 
tributed to the support of at least three 
cathedral spires. But this he found a poor 
sort of remedy for his financial constipation: 
it never failed to induce in him such a violent 
spell of economy that, when the fit had passed, 
he found his last state worse than the first. 

For the past twenty years Mr. Figgins had 
been conspicuous for his religious fervour— 
for the doctrines of capitalism. What should 
have persuaded him to visit these offices was 
an entire mystery to Godfrey; nor had he 
given the problem a great deal of thought. 
The idea of any sort of co-operation between 
himself and this financial overlord, or any 
identity of interest, was something altogether 
outside the scope of his imagination; and 
Godfrey was not given to worrying about 
phenomena outside the scope of his imagina¬ 
tion. 

“ Yes, most unpleasant news,” added Mr. 
Figgins, and smiled with a sweetness which 

25 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

would have made the pale-faced gid at the 
counter blush a rosy red. But this little 
performance was in strict accord with Mr. 
Figgins’s customary procedure: one of his few 
pleasures in life was to emit some devastat¬ 
ing pronouncement with a smile on his lips. 
His remark did not fail to register the desired 
effect. Godfrey’s hand went uneasily to his 
impeccable white collar and his lower jaw 
dropped. 

“ A moment, if you please,” interposed Mr. 
Figgins, lifting on high a large white hand. 
The remark was an unconscious mercy on the 
part of Mr. Figgins, Godfrey, at the moment, 
being quite incapable of considered speech. 
The large white hand, advanced in mid-air 
like some protective shield, and the amiable 
ferocity of this smiling potentate of commerce, 
at first fascinated him, and then sent a shiver 
down his spine. Under this magician’s bale¬ 
ful spell the foundations of his business were 
already crumbling into dust. It was uncanny, 
unthinkable. He wildly thought: 

“ On any other morning but this-” 

For, after all, his business was old and well- 
established, and the profits accruing, though 
beneath the notice of a Mr. Figgins, were 
sufficient to sustain him and his household in 
a condition of reasonable affluence. He was 


26 



MR. FIGGINS 


the sole proprietor of the firm, and there 
wasn’t a hamlet in the kingdom in which its 
product was not known and sold. Nearly 
seventy years before, under the direction of 
the old man, his father, Jobb’s Liver Pills had 
made their first appearance on the market. In 
their way they were quite good pills, and 
although the formula employed was not of a 
startling originality, the ingredients were per¬ 
fectly harmless. Indeed, very early on in 
their career the pills gained a confined repu¬ 
tation for serving their purpose: which, to old 
Jobb, was a matter for surprise and gratifi¬ 
cation. But he lacked that ultimate wisdom 
which differentiates the plain business man 
from the successful trader in medicinal goods: 
he was quite content to sell his pills for not 
more than threepence a box, with the result 
that the more sceptical members of the public 
refused to buy them at the price; they felt 
that they were too cheap to be good and that 
the average liver would scorn to yield to a 
course of treatment representing such a mea¬ 
gre expenditure. However, old Jobb, by keep¬ 
ing down the overhead charges of the business 
and by practising strict personal economy, 
contrived to send his son to Cambridge. God¬ 
frey, being quite undecided as to what his 
future career in life might be, followed the 

27 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

recognised procedure for all men who find 
themselves at a loose end at that University: 
he took the History Tripos. He failed to 
pass; but it was hardly his fault that he spent 
half his time worrying whether any of his 
friends suspected his connection with Jobb’s 
Liver Pills. A few months after his failure 
to satisfy the examiners that he was fully 
conversant with the thrilling narratives in 
Stubbs’s Select Charters and that same pre¬ 
late’s Constitutional History of England, in 
three volumes, his father died, and Godfrey, 
having nothing better to do, took over the 
business. Any scruples he may have had 
about devoting his life’s work to the manu¬ 
facture and sale of liver pills were sufficiently 
allayed by the comfortable knowledge that 
his father had been able to leave him twelve 
thousand pounds as well as a flourishing little 
business. 

Within two years Godfrey had lost most 
of the money and nearly ruined the business. 
In despite of rather than as the result of his 
University education Godfrey was cursed with 
bright ideas, and the discovery that people 
who suffered from their livers, and the chem¬ 
ists and druggists who sold them cures, dis¬ 
approved of bright ideas cost him nearly 
twelve thousand pounds. In the first place, 


28 


MR. FIGGINS 


the box that had proved so acceptable to a 
wide public was, from Godfrey’s point of view, 
intolerably ugly and old-fashioned; it carried 
an ill-printed illustration which might equally 
well have been taken for a pictorial represen¬ 
tation of the human liver or as a rough draw¬ 
ing of some unknown tropic beast. Godfrey 
preferred to give the public an artistic little 
box with which any lady of taste could have 
added a decorative note to her dressing-table. 
The public resented the new box, and the 
most ardent believer in the efficacy of Jobb’s 
Liver Pills wavered in his loyalty. Next, 
Godfrey changed the name. From all points 
of view but that of policy the mistake was 
excusable. Godfrey was of a fastidious 
nature, and the crudeness of the description 
“ liver pills ” had acutely displeased him long 
before he had acquired the refinements of a 
University education; and the new boxes 
went forth to the world under the name of 
Jobb’s Hepatic Pilules. It laid the public 
low, and had it not been for the fact that there 
were several thousand gross of the old boxes 
in stock to be disposed of, the offices in Wat- 
ling Street would have been speedily to let. 
Whereupon Godfrey wisely compromised with 
his unenlightened fellow-countrymen: he gave 
back to them their beloved box, but kept the 

29 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


name of his own choosing. Even so he might 
never have saved the business had he not 
introduced two new and highly laudable inno¬ 
vations: he increased the price of the box 
from threepence to one shilling and three¬ 
pence, and he began to advertise. 

Old Jobb had never advertised. Adver¬ 
tising cost money, and he objected to almost 
any form of activity that inferred the expendi¬ 
ture of money. He had started life by hand¬ 
ing over the counter in a little shop up a side 
street boxes of pills which cost him something 
under a farthing each, receiving innumerable 
threepences in immediate exchange. This was 
straightforward business dealing; he knew 
where he was. He refused to countenance 
the idea of handing over to newspapers in¬ 
numerable pounds in exchange for advertise¬ 
ments which, whatever else they might be, 
were certainly not hard cash. Besides, every¬ 
one knew about Jobb’s Liver Pills: why 
preach to the converted? Godfrey was dif¬ 
ferent; Godfrey determined to make the pub¬ 
lic pay more for the pills and to allocate a 
certain proportion of these extra profits to 
instructing a yet wider public on the merits of 
his pills—the public, quite rightly, paying for 
this service. When he was down to his last 
hundred pounds he started to advertise: 

30 


MR. FIGGINS 


JOBB’S HEPATIC PILULES. 

Good for the Liver. 

Is. 3d. a Box. 

He never said more than this, but he said it, 
day in and day out, and never for a moment 
left off saying it. The public who had with a 
doubting faith paid a mere threepence for a 
box of Jobb’s Liver Pills hailed with relief the 
advent of Jobb’s Hepatic Pilules at five times 
the price, and bought them with an unfailing 
regularity every Saturday night; and, accord¬ 
ing to their unsolicited testimonials, received 
five times the benefit from them; and God¬ 
frey, as soon as the tide had turned, had been 
able to marry Marjorie and build himself a 
house in the country and buy a new car every 
year; and it was across this pleasant pano¬ 
rama of universal contentment that there 
arose the chilling menace of Mr. Figgins’s 
large white hand. A cruel little smile still 
lingered on his lips. 

“ Really, Mr. Jobb,” he purred, as if his 
heart were overflowing with a sincere emotion, 
“ you ought to regard yourself as the most 
fortunate of men.” 

Godfrey sank back in his chair, wondering 
what new blow these changed tactics fore¬ 
boded. Face to face with this financial ogre, 
he wished devoutly that his father, instead of 

31 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

allowing him to pursue the delights of 
Stubbs’s Select Charters , had tried to make 
a business man of him. 

“ Like your father before you,” added Mr. 
Figgins, with a lugubriousness that might 
have been intended as a mark of homage to 
the dead. “ Might I ask how long this little 
business of yours has been in existence?” 

“ Probably before you were born,” said 
Godfrey, with a momentary feeling of extreme 
youth. He bitterly reflected that there was no 
power on earth to prevent him from thrusting 
his fingers into this creature’s podgy neck; 
within three seconds he could have sent him 
rolling to the bottom of the stairs, minus a few 
limbs chipped off at the first and second floor 
corners. It was a gratifying vision, and the 
more desirable because it was so utterly un¬ 
attainable. Mr. Figgins had wealth, and God¬ 
frey had a proper respect for the power that 
wealth confers. If Mr. Figgins desired to 
annihilate him he had only to take out his 
cheque-book and unscrew his fountain pen. 
Godfrey, certainly, had no very clear idea as 
to how Mr. Figgins would proceed to annihi¬ 
late him; but he had sense enough to under¬ 
stand that there was nothing that money 
could not buy in the world of commerce, or, 
alternatively, extinguish. He looked out of 

32 


MR. FIGGINS 


the window, as if seeking a way of escape 
from some imminent disaster. The disaster, of 
course, was purely conjectural; but Mr. Fig- 
gins, without further delay, obligingly pro¬ 
ceeded to confirm Godfrey’s premonitions. 

“ Before I was born!” echoed Mr. Figgins. 
“ After three-quarters of a century, with a 
clear field in front of you, you’ve not been 
able to do better than this!” And his eyes 
roved disapprovingly from the torn leather 
top of the highly unpolished mahogany table 
in front of which Godfrey was sitting, to the 
antique typewriter that stood on a battered 
side-table at Godfrey’s right elbow, and 
finally rested on the linoleum floor-covering, 
in an apparent endeavour to revive its long- 
lost pattern. 

“ No,” said Mr. Figgins, with a very deep 
sigh of relief, “ I shall feel no compunction 
whatsoever!” 

“ You will excuse me, Mr. -” Here 

Godfrey made a poor pretence of referring to 
his visitor’s card in order to recollect his name. 

“ Figgins,” murmured that gentleman; and 
then again, hardly above a sibilant whisper, 
“ Figgins.” And the implication was that here 
was a name to sway the destiny of nations 
and to pronounce, if need be, the doom of the 
world. 


33 



A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


But a fierce courage had suddenly possessed 
Godfrey's indignant soul, slowly and pain¬ 
fully born of that contemptuous glance with 
which the owner of this titanic name had 
surveyed his office apartments. Old Jobb’s 
first doctrine in life had been to keep down 
overhead charges; it was the earliest piece of 
worldly wisdom he had endeavoured to incul¬ 
cate into his son; almost with his dying breath 
he had reiterated it; and Godfrey had never 
departed from it. Hence the faded linoleum, 
the antique typewriter—for Godfrey was not 
above typing some of his own business letters 
—and the crumbling leather top of the worm- 
eaten mahogany table. When, during the last 
few years of his life, the business world had 
begun to indulge in splendidly elaborate office 
equipment, old Jobb had set his face against 
this effeminate innovation. His purpose in 
life was to sell pills; and although the office 
table might be on its last legs, a new one 
would not have sold him another pill; the 
table therefore remained. From time to time 
his son might have contemplated the monu¬ 
mental and labyrinthine edifices behind which, 
he was assured, a business man could take up 
his station without loss of self-respect; but, 
on the paternal principle, he had calculated 
how many boxes of pills he would have to 
34 


MR. FIGGINS 


sell in order to recoup the outlay, and was so 
horrified that he felt that he had desecrated 
his father’s memory. Besides, this old table 
was an historic relic; even the worms that 
battened on it belonged to a prouder race. 
On this table his father had written out that 
formula to which a firm of manufacturing 
chemists in the country had ever since ad¬ 
hered. The table, in fact, was the one thing in 
the office before which Mr. Figgins, had he 
been of a susceptible nature, might have been 
expected to humble his head. But Mr. Fig¬ 
gins, who would have scorned to sit on any 
Board that did not comprise at least fourteen 
handsome armchairs, was not impressed. 
Having hissed out his name he leaned back, 
folded his hands over his paunch, and waited 
for Godfrey to continue his remarks. 

“ What would you do, Mr.— Figgins, if I 
told you to clear out of this office at once?” 

“ Why, my dear Mr. Jobb,” replied Mr. 
Figgins with an almost uncanny urbanity, “ I 
should go! But,” he added quietly, “ the 
misfortune would be yours.” 

“ Oh, to hell with you!” exclaimed God¬ 
frey. “ Explain yourself, and be done with 
it.” 

Mr. Figgins sighed. He liked playing the 
lion, and it was not often that he came up 

35 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

against such a mouse as this. A diverting ten 
minutes! He sighed again, and regretfully 
became the simple business man unfolding an 
ordinary business proposition. But the accent 
of his voice was one with which, in his time, 
he had quelled into submission legions of irate 
shareholders. 

“ You may not know, Mr. Jobb, that I 
am in very close touch with the Chemical 
Corporation of America?” 

“Well?” Godfrey’s heart beat faster at 
the sound of that ominous title. 

“ They are an immensely wealthy corpora¬ 
tion with almost unlimited resources. A mil¬ 
lion dollars in their sight-” 

Mr. Figgins deprecatingly waved a large 
white hand, as if half-apologising for the 
Biblical nature of the reference. 

“ With my co-operation they are prepared 
to risk at least twice that sum-” 

“ They are,” interjected Godfrey with a 
scornful emphasis. 

“ I always find that I work much better 
when I am using other people’s money.” Mr. 
Figgins smiled genially; he was beginning to 
like this comparatively young man; he pro¬ 
vided him with such excellent openings. 

“ Anyway,” he added with extreme empha¬ 
sis, “ we have come to the conclusion that 
36 




MR. FIGGINS 


there is a great deal of money to be made out 
of the liver ailments of this nation.” 

“ Go on,” said Godfrey, with a look which 
was a mixture of wrath and defiance. “ Go 
on.” 

“ This is a truth, the full significance of 
which you don’t appear to have grasped. And 
you’ve had three-quarters of a century to do 
it in! That’s why I said that I felt no sort 
of compunction in this matter.” 

“ What matter?” 

“ Driving Jobb’s Hepatic Pilules off the 
market!” Mr. Figgins again leaned forward, 
his eyes alight with a sudden flame of enthusi¬ 
asm. For the first time Godfrey felt that the 
man was speaking with the utmost sincerity. 

“ You’re all behind the times, Jobb; your 
business is right out of the running. Where 
there is no vision the people perish; and the 
same law applies to business organisation 
to-day. You’ve been content to jog along, 
whereas the race is to the swift and the 
strong—and those who advertise!” Mr. Fig¬ 
gins drew a deep breath, charged with a 
righteous indignation. 

“ Look at your petty little advertisements! ” 
he continued, speaking with tremendous 
rapidity. “ ‘ Jobb’s Hepatic Pilules—good 
for the liver—one and threepence a box.’ . . . 

37 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

And this the third decade of the twentieth 
century! Do you think that's the way to 
make untold millions buy your pills? We will 
show you!” 

Mr. Figgins half-closed his eyes as if he 
were making a dim reconnaissance of some 
promised land; he lifted a large white hand 
and held it motionless, pointing upwards 
towards the summit of his contemplated 
achievement. 

“ Royal Academicians shall illustrate our 
advertisements, and the greatest novelists, 
scientists and economists of the day shall write 
them. ‘ Life’s Little Liver Tragedies ’— 
‘ How you Got your Liver ’—‘ The Liver in 
its Relation to Present-day Industrial Prob¬ 
lems ’—can’t you see the nation waiting with 
a breathless interest for the next in the series 
—and meanwhile buying the pills?” 

“ Possibly,” murmured Godfrey, feigning 
a languid interest. “ And what do you pro¬ 
pose to call them?” 

“ Anything that’s homely.” 

“ And what do you propose to put into 
them?” 

“ That’s the merest detail,” replied Mr. 
Figgins, impatient of such a stupid question. 
“ We shan’t need to think about that until 
all our other plans are complete. Almost any- 

38 


MR. FIGGINS 


thing that’s round will do. It’s only Faith 
that matters—and we’ll see that people get 
plenty of that!” 

“ And how long do you anticipate it will 
take to put me out of business?” 

“ I give you six months at the outside,” 
replied Mr. Figgins, trying to appear gen¬ 
erous. “ We shall, of course, make it worth 
while for the shopkeeper not to sell your 
goods.” 

“ I understand perfectly. There’s only one 
thing that still rather mystifies me. Why 
have you felt it worth while to reveal these 
wonderful plans to me?” 

Mr. Figgins gave him a nod of approval; 
he was rather pleased with Mr. Jobb, and not 
less pleased with himself. He had put a very 
proper fear into the heart of this young pro¬ 
prietor; the negotiations were as good as con¬ 
cluded. 

“ So that you may be able to answer— 
sensibly, I hope—the question I am about to 
put to you.” 

He lifted both his large white hands, 
smiled expansively, and leaned forward as if 
he were about to enfold Godfrey in a joyful 
embrace. 

“ Because we recognise that Jobb’s Hepatic 
Pilules have a very good reputation, we are 

39 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

prepared to offer you twenty thousand pounds 
for the name.” 

Godfrey got up from his chair. Sell the 
business, the business his father had founded, 
to the Chemical Corporation of America! 
He suddenly felt an enormous affection for the 
faded linoleum, the antique typewriter, the 
crumbling leather top of the worm-eaten 
mahogany table. Almost unconsciously his 
eyes wandered over them, and finally rested on 
the most precarious of the four table-legs. 
The Chemical Corporation of America! Mr. 
Figgins was watching him closely; he already 
perceived that he was beaten. 

“ Thank you,” said Godfrey. “ But I 
prefer to be ruined.” 

Mr. Figgins heavily rose from his chair and 
rammed his hat on his head; he gave Godfrey 
one long look of annoyance and disgust. 

“ You are a sentimentalist,” he growled. 
“ You are also a fool. You’d better look out 
for yourself, my young friend. Good-morn¬ 
ing,” and rambled out of the room. 

It was not until Mr. Figgins was half-way 
down the shabby little staircase that Godfrey 
realised that the interview was concluded. A 
thousand smarting epithets then crowded to 
his lips, each one of which was fully calculated 
to petrify the egregious Figgins. He rushed 
40 


MR. FIGGINS 


for the door, nearly flung it off its hinges, and 
for one mad moment appeared to contemplate 
the feasibility of taking a flying leap through 
the door opposite to the foot of the stairs. 
Reluctantly he resigned the project, slowly 
closed the door with a fine show of noncha¬ 
lance, and sat down at the despised and de¬ 
crepit mahogany table with both hands to his 
forehead. 

“ What a morning! ” he gasped. 

“ Nerves,” murmured the pale-faced girl 
behind the counter; and having spent a most 
enthralling half-hour at the keyhole, resumed 
her duties. 


41 


CHAPTER III 


MARJORIE’S NEWS 

\ 

TV/TARJORIE was proud of her home. In- 
deed, it so nearly realised her ideals that 
occasionally it rather bored her. Nothing ever 
went wrong, and all she had to do was to ad¬ 
mire the perfection of its organisation. Even 
the servants refused to give trouble. That 
part of the world which Godfrey had selected 
for his country retreat had escaped the menace 
of the Metropolitan Railway, and the natives 
who resided in the vicinity were not sufficient¬ 
ly abreast of the times to understand that dis¬ 
content is the very soul of happiness. Marjorie 
sometimes felt quite wistful when she heard 
what dreadful experiences some women had 
with their cooks. Mrs. Meadows, so long 
as she was not interfered with, and so long 
as there was cooking to be done and a rolling- 
pin to brandish, was content to pass all her 
days in plenteousness and peace. Her spirits 
were as light and airy as her own puff pastry. 
She had two defects only. Annually, at no 
particular season and for no particular reason, 
she was known, as she herself expressed it, to 
take a drop too much. Marjorie had vainly 
endeavoured to find an explanation for this 
phenomenon. It was one of the half-dozen 
subjects on which she did not take Godfrey 

42 


MARJORIES NEWS 


into her full confidence; indeed, she exercised 
the strictest precautions that no report of 
these attacks should ever reach his ears. Her 
other failing was less serious, though some¬ 
times even more exasperating. The over¬ 
whelming esteem in which she held the master 
of the house made Marjorie feel that her 
authority as its mistress lacked proper recog¬ 
nition. If, for instance, Mrs. Meadows had 
even dimly suspected his secret antipathy for 
dried haddock, forty thousand Marjories 
would not have induced her to cook it; the 
haddock, in that part of the globe, would 
forthwith have become unprocurable. For¬ 
tunately Godfrey had sacrificed his own feel¬ 
ings to Marjorie’s theories on diet, and the 
administrative system of the household had 
not been rent in twain. 

And Marjorie had every reason to be proud 
of her home. Every room in it, with one 
exception, was a masterpiece of her own de¬ 
vising; and she had long ago come to the con¬ 
clusion that she had nothing to learn from the 
illustrated papers on the subject of furnish¬ 
ing and decoration. The one exception was 
Godfrey’s study. When, under the sudden 
onslaught of a desire for change, she had cast 
out every curtain in the house, Godfrey had 
briefly informed her that if she dared to inter- 

43 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


fere with the curtains that already adorned 
his study to his entire satisfaction, there 
would be a scene of domestic discord such as 
had never previously desecrated their married 
life; and Marjorie, after resorting to every 
legitimate and illegitimate feminine artifice, 
had tearfully surrendered. But it was not the 
fact of surrender which distressed her so much 
as the revelation that her husband was, after 
all, a person of indomitable resolution. How¬ 
ever, she had consoled herself as best she 
could by some new curtains which cost three 
times as much as the sum he had authorised 
her to spend; and he had not even ventured 
to murmur a protest. This minor triumph 
helped to restore her spirits to normal, and 
the incident was forgotten, though never quite 
forgiven, almost as soon as it was closed. 

Nevertheless there was one very real and 
abiding cloud over the outwardly fair horizon 
of Marjorie’s married life; it was one other of 
those half-dozen subjects on which she never 
took Godfrey into her confidence, because she 
could not have done so without hurting him. 
The subject concerned was Jobb’s Hepatic 
Pilules, Ltd. If there was one thing on earth 
she abhorred with a heart full to breaking- 
point, not for itself but for all that it con¬ 
noted, it was one of her husband’s Hepatic 
44 


MARJORIE’S NEWS 


Pilules. Never a day passed but what he 
brought home an item of news concerning the 
past, present or future welfare of Jobb’s 
Hepatic Pilules, Ltd., and there were times 
when she felt that she would shriek in three 
languages at one and the same moment if ever 
she heard the name again. It was the one 
never-ending topic of their lives; it seemed to 
crop up of its own accord in the course of their 
ordinary private conversation; it was like an 
eruption beneath the skin, threatening to 
break out at any minute. She could never get 
away from the wretched things. In almost 
any newspaper or periodical she took up she 
would be sure to find, staring her in the face 
though tucked away in some odd corner, 
a little advertisement for Jobb’s Hepatic 
Pilules, with a single-lined comment that they 
were good for the liver, and the price, one 
and threepence a box. In her eyes every one 
of these little advertisements was a loathsome 
typographical disease, infecting the whole of 
the paper. There was no village in the coun¬ 
try so remote that she could not count upon 
coming across a box of the pills in the first 
window she passed in the High Street. 
Wherever two or three little shops were gath¬ 
ered together, there also would boxes of 
Jobb’s Hepatic Pilules be found; they ap- 

45 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

peared to be an immemorial part of the land¬ 
scape. 

But Marjorie did not detest the pills as 
such; had anyone denied their efficacy she 
would have stoutly defended them; she was 
ready to maintain, with Godfrey and the old 
man before him, that these little boxes of 
compacted faith had made a very considera¬ 
ble contribution to the quota of human hap¬ 
piness. What she did acutely resent was the 
fact that her whole existence was founded 
upon them. The house she lived in, the food 
she ate, the frocks she wore, were all of them 
to be attributed to the highly profitable sales 
of one-and-threepenny boxes of pills. It was 
not any inherent injustice in this economic 
system that she resented, but the sheer indig¬ 
nity of it. She had never forgotten how, on 
one occasion, when she had asked Godfrey 
to buy her a two-hundred-guinea fur coat, he 
had murmured, “Good Lord, just think how 
many thousand boxes of pills I should have to 
get rid of in order to pay for it! ” He had not 
bought her the coat, and she had never asked 
for another. She had acquired an invincible 
distaste for fur coats, of whatever price, and 
some time elapsed before she could throw off 
the habit of translating every purchase she 
made into terms of so many boxes of pills. 

46 


MARJORIE'S NEWS 


Her friends, of course, knew everything; 
but in the matter of Jobb’s Hepatic Pilules, 
Ltd., they were discretion itself. In mo¬ 
ments of heart to heart converse there was no 
subject under the sun, from babies to barom- 
etry, which they did not fearly discuss; 
but when Marjorie was present the word pill 
was banished from their common vocabulary. 
And because they liked her they even endeav¬ 
oured to avoid making any sort of reference 
to the public activities of their husbands. If 
one’s husband happened to be a barrister, or 
an editor, or even a stockbroker, it was un¬ 
necessary to conceal the fact; it might even 
have been pardonable to make an occasional 
mention of his exploits in the great world. 
But the unfortunate Marjorie could never 
have been expected to come into line with the 
proud announcement that, the day before yes¬ 
terday, Godfrey had despatched ten thousand 
gross of boxes of his pills to one of the most 
important wholesalers in the North of Eng¬ 
land. ... So that, ironically enough, even the 
kindness of her friends wounded her; and it 
was too late now to change her tactics. From 
the very first, of course, she ought to have 
gloried in her shame; she ought to have re¬ 
garded the pills as a fit subject for communal 
mirth; and in moments of depression she 

47 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

blamed her husband for the mistake she had 
made. 

Godfrey, with a sterner sense of business 
and household responsibilities, never made 
fun of those pills of his, from which all bless¬ 
ings flowed; he was not such a fool as to get 
into the habit of scorning his avocation in life. 
For want of something better to do he had 
carried on the direction of his father’s pill 
business; and the only consideration that 
mattered to him was the fact that it was a 
business, like any other business: that it hap¬ 
pened to be a pill business was nothing to the 
point. He never even guessed that she some¬ 
times lay awake at night in a state of furious 
indignation because, after the day’s work of 
despatching so many thousand gross of boxes 
of pills, he should be able to sleep in a condi¬ 
tion of dreamy contentment.... And there 
had appeared to be no way out; she had al¬ 
most resigned herself to the prospect of living 
under this shadow for the rest of her days. 

And to-day she had seen salvation! And 
that salvation had come in the shape of a 
letter in the morning’s post. She had taken 
her first glance at it in bed; and it was such 
a marvellous letter that she had forthwith 
dismissed from her mind any thought of 
breakfast. Instead she had got up, and, 
48 


MARJORIES NEWS 


properly to celebrate the occasion, had en¬ 
dued her most charming morning frock, and 
re-read the letter in the solemn privacy of 
Godfrey’s study—which was so very solemn 
and so very private that she had unwillingly 
indulged in a certain amount of sober reflec¬ 
tion. However, she had come to the conclu¬ 
sion that if it wasn’t absolute salvation it was 
at least the first step leading to it; and she 
had telephoned Godfrey. Certainly he had 
not sounded particularly pleased to hear 
from her at that hour of the morning; and in 
conformity with her usual practice she 
blamed the pills. She could so well picture 
him in his stuffy little office, worrying over 
the despatch of so many thousand gross 
boxes; and so on. It was horrible... . How¬ 
ever, she dismissed the picture and gave a 
little flourish with her letter, as a mark of her 
conviction that there were better days to 
come. 

The rest of the morning she spent in an en¬ 
deavour to appear perfectly normal. With 
an outward show of calm deliberation she dis¬ 
cussed with the gardener what steps he should 
take to arrest the declining glory of the 
rockery; but through it all her thoughts 
soared far above such considerations and she 
hugged within her breast her secret joy. In 

49 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

fact, she very soon decided that there was 
no topic under the sun which was altogether 
worthy of her attention, other than the one 
that already engrossed it; and as the morn¬ 
ing wore on she found that the customary 
peaceful progression of home affairs was of it¬ 
self putting an intolerable strain on her 
nerves: she wanted noise, movement, people. 
Immediately after lunch she caught a train to 
town, took a taxi to an address in a turning off 
the Strand, with a fluttering heart entered an 
unprosperous-looking building six stories high, 
boarded a lift wherein her hopes fell the 
higher it mounted, and finally found herself 
in a dim and shabby room in a far corner on 
the sixth floor. Nevertheless, when she 
emerged, half an hour later, her cheeks were 
flushed and her eyes were triumphant. The 
excitement of marriage was the only experi¬ 
ence she could remember at all comparable 
to that enthralling interview. 

Back in the Strand she found that she had 
nearly three hours to waste. On any other 
day but this she would have gone into a cin¬ 
ema, where she could be sure of obtaining a 
little peace and quiet. But to-day the last 
thing in the world she desired was a little 
peace and quiet; what she wanted was a 
homeopathic remedy for her own turbulent 
50 


MARJORIES NEWS 


emotions. She even contemplated the hei¬ 
nous course of attempting to induce Godfrey 
to leave the office for the rest of the after¬ 
noon, although she quite well knew that she 
would have to meet with an accident in the 
street, or some equivalent disaster, before he 
would think of leaving his post of duty. He 
had contended, time and again, that any such 
dereliction, without adequate cause, set a bad 
example to the staff. Only by exercising a 
control over her tongue which was not to be 
reasonably expected of any woman had she 
refrained from, pointing out that this staff of 
his, for the sake of whose so-called discipline 
he was prepared to immolate her dearest 
wishes, consisted of a pale-faced girl, a clerk, 
and an office boy not more than four feet high. 
Regretfully she turned her back on the City, 
a little annoyed with herself that reason 
should thus have triumphed over caprice. 
However, she had never forgotten how God¬ 
frey, on one similar occasion, had very bitter¬ 
ly and pointedly informed her that the last 
thing a business man desires to see, or even 
to think of, during business hours, is his wife. 

Within a quarter of an hour she found her¬ 
self wandering somewhat disconsolately up 
Regent Street towards Oxford Circus. By 
the time she had reached Oxford Street she 


51 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


was the most miserable woman in London. In 
the light of the honour that had come to her 
with that morning’s post, her function in life 
was now to be that of a detached observer; 
and her first attempt to exercise it had re¬ 
sulted in a fit of spiritual gloom. It was hard¬ 
ly four o’clock and London’s prettiest girls 
were still shut up within the four walls of 
their offices and shops; but an inexhaustible 
flux of womankind remained to eddy along 
these beatific pavements, peering with raven¬ 
ous eyes at the glories exposed behind glitter¬ 
ing quarter-inch plate-glass windows, in the 
everlasting, soul-satisfying, but never com¬ 
pletely successful search for creature adorn¬ 
ments. Marjorie shuddered at the uncharity 
of her own thoughts; till to-day, she con¬ 
cluded, she must have taken this particular 
walk with her eyes shut. It was curious to 
reflect that, somewhere or other, a small 
army of men—husbands, fathers, lovers, 
brothers—were working behind office doors 
to maintain this vast concourse of women; 
and it was still more curious to reflect that 
nearly every one of these women, in this 
flood of women, of whatever shape or hue, of 
whatever degree of loveliness or unloveliness 
imposed by the most unjust caprice of an in¬ 
scrutable Will, was, or had been at some 
52 


MARJORIE’S NEWS 


stage of her career, the only woman in the 
world for one particular man.... And Mar¬ 
jorie, in these moments of shattering revela¬ 
tion, hated the sight of her own sex; she 
wanted to fly to Godfrey and feel his mascu¬ 
line presence about her. She boarded the 
first ’bus that passed her: anything, any¬ 
where was better than this garish Regent 
Street, this tawdry Oxford Street, this pa¬ 
tient, sleepless pilgrimage of idle women. 

When, after a reviving cup of tea and a 
long walk across the Park, she found herself 
in Piccadilly, there was still half an hour to go 
before Godfrey was due to arrive; but she 
walked into his club and gratefully allowed 
herself to be conducted to the waiting-room. 
The moment the door closed behind her she 
felt completely recovered; the shopping 
nightmare was definitely a thing of the past. 
That quality of solid masculine solemnity 
which pervaded the whole of the building pen¬ 
etrated the room which was provided for the 
segregation of the women that entered it; 
and she rejoiced in her temporary imprison¬ 
ment in this fortress of men. It was a luxury 
to be alone again, and yet not feel lonely; 
better still it was, and a final consolation to 
the spirit, to have an adequate and unre¬ 
stricted opportunity to touch up her lips and 

53 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

her cheeks, and to take off her hat, and put 
it on again. Protracted as these operations 
were she still had another ten minutes to 
wait, and these she absorbed in a cursory ex¬ 
amination of the Visitors’ Book. Not one in 
a hundred of the names conveyed anything 
to her; nevertheless she appeared to derive 
a considerable amount of pleasure from mere¬ 
ly running through them. She was about to 
close the book, not very much the richer in 
social lore, when an idea seized her. She 
took up the pen provided and flowingly in¬ 
scribed in the appropriate column Mrs. God¬ 
frey Jobb. When Godfrey himself walked 
into the room she was delicately adding an 
entirely superfluous full-stop. She flourished 
the pen in dangerous proximity to his nose 
as soon as she rose to face him. 

“ As they say in the Haberdashery, sign, 
please!” 

“ What the devil are you doing with that 
pen?” asked Godfrey. After this day’s ad¬ 
ventures he was not in the mood for persi¬ 
flage. Besides, what had possessed her that 
she should want to write her name in the 
Visitors’ Book? He couldn’t remember the 
occasion when she had last complied with this 
formality. 

“ Sign, please!” 


54 


MARJORIE’S NEWS 


“ What’s the idea?” 

“ Oh,” murmured Marjorie, with a re¬ 
proachful glance for his lack of responsive¬ 
ness, “I only thought I’d like to see how it 
looked.” 

“ Have it your own way,” he grunted, even 
more mystified than before, and dashed off 
his usual signature, G. Jobb. Marjorie 
watched him closely. His eyes were restless 
and his whole manner was irritable. Obvi¬ 
ously something had gone wrong at the 
office; she recognised the symptoms. In the 
ordinary way he was ready enough to fall in 
with her least whim, whereas this evening he 
had hardly troubled to glance at her: she 
might not have been there at all! She con¬ 
sidered that she had every right to feel of¬ 
fended. She liked to be looked at, and it was 
part of his duty in life to look at her: not 
even his devotion to the pill business could 
excuse this neglect. Always this pill busi¬ 
ness! However, after years of self-suppres¬ 
sion, the day had at last arrived when she 
would be able to tell him just what she 
thought about it all. 

“ Godfrey, what has happened?” 

“ That,” he remarked grimly, “is precisely 
what I proposed to ask you. Come along.” 

He took hold of her arm and gently pushed 

55 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


her into the lift, and violently slammed both 
the outer door and the inner iron gate. She 
allowed this piece of irritability to pass un¬ 
noticed, knowing well from past experience 
that it was hopeless to attempt to argue with 
him when his nerves were on edge. More¬ 
over, she confidently expected that the peace¬ 
ful atmosphere of his beloved club would 
quickly restore his equanimity. Between 
the bars of the double iron gates on the other 
side of the lift she caught a brief glimpse 
through a blue haze of the somnolent and re¬ 
clining figures in the smoking-room, into 
which no woman was ever allowed to enter, 
and of a broad and winding sumptuously car¬ 
peted staircase, on which no woman’s foot 
had ever trod, and of a thin and somewhat 
saturnine attendant at the bottom of it, 
guarding this sacred way. This sombre fig¬ 
ure, she remembered, had once addressed 
himself to her when she had loitered for a 
moment in the vestibule, and never in her 
life had she felt so much the poor defenceless 
woman, a feminine intruder in this home of 
men. The moment she set foot in the drawing 
room her spirits revived. For one thing, 
there were other women about; she had es¬ 
caped from that world in which man alone 
ruled in comfortable and lordly isolation; 
56 


MARJORIE’S NEWS 


and for another, in a room designed to please 
the tastes of women she felt better able to 
meet Godfrey on her own ground. It was 
the sort of room in which a man would have 
looked incomplete without a woman beside 
him. 

“ Near the fire?” asked Godfrey with the 
utmost brevity. 

For reply Marjorie led him to a remote 
lounge with a yellow lamp-shade overhead 
and a blue screen beside it. Here, if any¬ 
where in that vast chamber, she would have 
him cornered. Elegantly as she disposed 
herself, still he had refused to give her more 
than the merest glance. He had deliberately 
planted himself on a straight-backed chair, 
and it seemed almost too much trouble for 
him to open his mouth. 

“ Godfrey,” she asked a second time, but 
now with a note of exasperation in her 
voice, “what has happened?” 

“ Oh,” said Godfrey wearily, examining 
the pattern of the wallpaper with an intent¬ 
ness which, she thought, would have been 
more properly directed at herself, “it’s a long 
story. I’ll tell you after dinner.” 

“ No,” said Marjorie. 

“Yes,” said Godfrey, with an almost im¬ 
perceptible tilt of the chin. 


57 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

Marjorie lifted her eyes and sighed to 
heaven, and began to hum over very softly 
the air of one of her latest songs. When he 
was in one of his moods these tactics, she 
knew, either mollified him or resulted in such 
an explosion as would clear the air soon af¬ 
terwards. 

“ I say, Marjorie!” 

She went on with her humming; it was 
part of her disciplinary measure on these oc¬ 
casions to refuse to speak to him. 

“ I say, Marjorie, I’m most awfully 
sorry; but I’ve had such an absolutely filthy 
time at the office to-day.” 

Back to those everlasting pills! She 
sighed again, but stopped her humming. 
After all, it was a woman’s first duty in life to 
be of a forgiving nature. 

“ All the same,” she commented, “you 
might take a little interest in me. No one to 
look at you would imagine that I was your 
wife.” 

“ That is precisely what I should have 
thought they would have assumed. I’m 
sorry,” he added, very contritely. “Tell me. 
why did you ring me up this morning?” And 
got up from his chair and sat down beside 
her on the lounge. 

It was Marjorie’s turn to be mollified. 

53 


MARJORIES NEWS 


The old note of tenderness had crept back 
into his voice, and a wave of emotion 
swept through her. The very foundations of 
the pill business might totter and fall, but the 
fact of her achievement would remain. A 
small uniformed boy was passing along the 
other side of the room, drawing the heavy 
curtains across the tall windows. With the 
blue screen at her back and only a dim yel¬ 
low-shaded lamp shining above it, the room 
suddenly became intimate and the outer 
world remote. She turned and faced him, 
with a flush on her cheeks and an eager light 
in her eyes. 

“Oh, Godfrey,” she whispered, clutching at 
his hand, “ I’m—I’ve-” 

Godfrey sat bolt upright, with lips apart 
and unbelieving eyes. He inwardly cursed 
himself for a fool. He ought to have guessed 
what it was all about. It was a child, of 
course. A child! A whole battalion of 
thoughts charged through his brain. He 
didn’t quite know what to make of it all. 
Certainly at the back of his mind there had 
always existed a recognition of the fact that 
the day would come when he would have to 
have a child; but he had never been in the 
habit of regarding it as an immediate prob¬ 
lem of the future. A child would mean the 

59 



A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

entire subversion of his present manner of 
existence; for some time to come it would 
mean good-bye to peace and quiet. Ten 
thousand anxieties would henceforth afflict 
him night and day; he would never know 
what the morrow might bring forth. When¬ 
ever in the course of his life he had encoun¬ 
tered the puling cry of a refractory infant his 
inclinations had bordered on the homicidal; 
the mere thought of being awakened by such 
music in the middle of the night, in his own 
home, was enough to make him forswear for 
ever the delights of parenthood. Indeed, it 
had been his private intention to defer this 
cataclysmic event until such time as he could 
afford to build a separate establishment for 
the housing of the child, its nurses and doctors 
and their attendant paraphernalia. It was 
the only chance, so far as he could see, of pre¬ 
serving his household from the dominion of 
its youngest member. 

He looked at his wife. She was watching 
him intently, with eyes wide open, waiting 
for him to speak. And he couldn’t get a word 
out! Only, even in the moment that their 
eyes met, he began to doubt the strength of 
his previous convictions. After all, there 
were two sides to every question, and till 
now, perhaps, he had chosen to look on the 
60 


MARJORIE’S NEWS 


dark side only. Children might be a nui¬ 
sance ; but most people seemed to have them, 
and to survive cheerily. His own clerk had 
a wife and three children, and lived in a 
four-roomed tenement somewhere on the out¬ 
skirts of London. Godfrey had long ago 
ceased to wonder how he managed to exist on 
three pounds seventeen shillings and six¬ 
pence a week, and turn up at the office each 
morning with a clean collar and a cheerful 
face. Apparently there was a mystery at¬ 
taching to this business that he couldn’t hope 
to fathom until he had a child of his own. 
Well, he’d not have long to wait now; and to 
his own surprise he found that he was feeling 
quite philosophic about the future. What 
with Figgins and this affair on his hands at 
one and the same time his hands would be 
pretty full. He might be a ruined man before 
many months were out. He perversely pic¬ 
tured himself and Marjorie trailing the 
streets of London with a child at their heels. 
. . . To Marjorie’s amazement he laughed 
outright. 

“ Godfrey!” 

“ I’m sorry, my dear,” he whispered, grasp¬ 
ing her hand, “I’m sorry. But it’s such a 
surprise. So wonderful for both of us—so 
beautiful for you.” 


61 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

“ But-” 

She drew away from him. It was incredi¬ 
ble, but the look she gave him was one of 
utter and inexpressible mortification. Behind 
the heavy curtains drooping from the tall 
windows he could hear the muted roar of 
London’s traffic; he could see the long line of 
lights shining down Piccadilly; he could feel, 
by force of contrast, the peace that invested 
the dimly lighted room in which they sat. 
And here she was, in this apocalyptic moment, 
drawing away from him! 

“ But, Marjorie,” he gasped. “ I’m glad, 
glad!” 

He tried to draw her towards him; but she 
shrank into the corner of the lounge as if she 
feared his touch. 

“ You—you don’t understand!” she cried 
at last. “ It’s not that at all! ” Her voice fell 
to a throbbing murmur; she almost sobbed. 

“ It’s only a book!” 

And Godfrey, to his horror and amaze¬ 
ment, realised that had they been sitting at 
home the tears would have come streaming 
down her cheeks. 


62 



CHAPTER IV 

MRS. MEADOWS BREAKS OUT 

jV/TRS. MEADOWS put down her picture 
*■*** paper with a prolonged sigh. There had 
been no dinner to cook that evening, and only 
the paper had saved her from feeling utterly 
miserable as a result of this enforced inaction. 
She had read every word in it, including the 
Paris fashion article, although she might 
have found some difficulty in explaining how 
she proposed to utilise the information thus 
painfully acquired. But certainly the cur¬ 
rent instalment of the serial story had, as she 
would have expressed it, lifted her right out 
of herself. The story, while preserving a 
strictly moral tone, enthrallingly described a 
woman’s gilded life of shame, and from it she 
derived a vicarious pleasure. Mrs. Meadows, 
indeed, had never known the delights of mat¬ 
rimony; the prefix to her name was hers only 
by right of courtesy. She had guilelessly as¬ 
sumed the married title because, without it, 
at her age, she would never have felt quite 
respectable. 

Mrs. Meadows, now physically and men¬ 
tally replete, folded her plump arms across her 
expansive bosom and imperiously directed 
Ella, the housemaid on duty, to remove the 
remains of her lonely repast; and Ella, whose 

63 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

age and size were alike about one-third of 
Mrs. Meadows’, set about her task with an 
apathy and an aversion which she did not 
trouble to conceal. She disapproved of Mrs. 
Meadows; in her private opinion she was a 
highly overrated person; she was quite sure 
that Mrs. Meadows, despite her engaging 
plumpness and the confidence it induced, was 
a woman with a past; and if in this convic¬ 
tion she was unjust, her prejudice was to be 
excused by reason of the fact that she was one 
of those privileged few upon whom devolved 
the duty of keeping Mrs. Meadows under 
lock and key during her periodic fits of 
drunkenness. Moreover, if there was one 
thing in the world that Ella detested it was 
the sight of Mrs. Meadows poring over a pic¬ 
ture paper two days old; it was a debauch; 
so long as there was a line unread Mrs. 
Meadows went on eating, and on those days 
when an enlarged issue appeared, Ella was 
careful to remove the extra pages. 

This evening Ella’s attitude was openly 
hostile. Dinner in that house was a relief 
and a blessing, if only because it gave Mrs. 
Meadows something better to do than mum¬ 
ble long and involved descriptions of two-hun¬ 
dred-guinea fur coats. Life was just endur¬ 
able so long as she was content to pursue her 
64 


MRS. MEADOWS BREAKS OUT 

enjoyment in a silence interrupted only by 
regular ingurgitation. On the other hand, 
when Mrs. Meadows attempted to assume the 
role of an anthologist she became, to Ella’s 
way of thinking, not merely a nuisance but an 
offence against nature. And Ella did not 
scruple to give visible expression to her out¬ 
raged conscience. With a dainty fastidious¬ 
ness which was in itself an insult to its late 
reader, she took up the paper—easily the 
greasiest-looking object on the table—be¬ 
tween two fingers, and dropped it on the fire. 
There was a rush of flame up the chimney, a 
portentous silence, and an explosion at the 
head of the table. The language in which 
Mrs. Meadows indulged during the ensuing 
five minutes more than confirmed Ella’s 
worst suspicions as to her shady past. The 
upshot of the discussion was that either 
Ella or she would clear out of that house, in¬ 
stantly; and because Ella did not move so 
much as an eyelid, she had no alternative but 
to clear out of it herself. She went. 

Before she quite realised what had hap¬ 
pened she found herself half-way up the back 
garden path; and she had reached the 
Tradesmen’s Entrance before it occurred to 
her to wonder what she was doing outside 
without a hat and a coat. She paused. 

65 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


Whatever the state of her emotions she could 
not lose sight of the fact that it was not re¬ 
spectable for a woman to be seen about at that 
time of night without a hat and a coat. She 
nearly crumpled up under the burden of this 
latest predicament. She put her hand to her 
breast, and beneath mountains of flesh felt 
her heart throbbing violently. Brandy! The 
thought flashed into her mind, the word 
trembled on her lips. Brandy! It wasn’t 
that she wanted it; she needed it! Without 
it she would assuredly die. . . . Her brain 
cleared under this overmastering desire; 
under its spell the silence in the garden be¬ 
came the more intense. She thought rap¬ 
idly. Impossible to return to the house and 
face Ella while she was in this state: the girl, 
she knew, already had her suspicions. Im¬ 
possible to contemplate a walk of a mile and 
a half to the village, with neither hat nor coat, 
nor—and here she almost sank to the ground 
in the agony of the moment—nor money! 
She shivered; there was a chill in the night 
air. Just one drop—and how the warmth 
from it would creep through her veins, a 
benediction to body and spirit! 

And still the silence enveloped her, until, 
out of it, a faint noise was born. Footsteps 
on the gravel path, two figures approaching 
66 


MRS. MEADOWS BREAKS OUT 


the front door! She could just glimpse them 
through the trees. They were not looking in 
her direction, and in the darkness they could 
never have seen her cowering at the gate: 
there was still time to retreat to the house, 
and, Ella or no Ella, to retreat was the only 
way to escape temptation. For now that the 
palpitations of her heart had ceased she had 
to recognise her desire for what it was: sheer 
lust for drink, drink of any sort so long as it 
was warm and soothing. Coat or no coat, hat 
or no hat, she would have it; and she wasn’t 
going back into the house while Ella was 
about. She had plenty of time. In all the 
years she had been with the Jobbs, never once 
had they come back from town before the last 
train down. Before Ella had opened the 
front door in answer to the bell, Mrs. 
Meadows, a veritable maenad of the night, 
was already under way for the village, with an 
anticipatory gleam from the lights of the bar 
parlour in her straining eyes. 

In one important detail Mrs. Meadows’ 
calculations were wrong; but it was not for 
her to know that this was no ordinary day in 
the life of that household; it never even oc¬ 
curred to her to ask herself whether the fig¬ 
ures at the door might not be those of Mr. and 
Mrs. Jobb. Marjorie and Godfrey, indeed, 

67 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


after a not too exhilarating meal at the club, 
had immediately left for the station. On any 
other day but this Marjorie would have vig¬ 
orously protested and certainly have had her 
own way; but this evening she was too mis¬ 
erable to argue about anything; Godfrey’s 
tragic blunder over her book had completely 
crushed her. As nearly as possible he had 
blushed, and mumbled that she must tell him 
all about it afterwards. Not another word 
on the subject had passed between them. 
Such was the auspicious inception of her auc- 
torial career! Throughout dinner Godfrey 
had sheltered himself behind a one-sided dis¬ 
cussion that centred around the personality 
and the premeditated achievements of a cer¬ 
tain Mr. Figgins. His name conveyed noth¬ 
ing to her; and why Godfrey should worry 
about the manners of a heaven-sent finan¬ 
cier who was prepared to offer him twenty 
thousand pounds for that wretched pill busi¬ 
ness was more than she could understand. In 
her estimation twenty thousand pounds was 
a sum of a sufficient magnitude to extinguish 
every other consideration; it wasn’t to be ex¬ 
pected that good manners should be the 
invariable accompaniment of great wealth. 
She recognised, of course, that Godfrey would 
have to do some work in the world, even 
68 


MRS. MEADOWS BREAKS OUT 


if he did sell the business; but so long as 
she escaped the danger of being branded, 
in a public capacity, as the wife of a pill 
manufacturer, she didn’t much mind what 
sort of work he chose to undertake. The 
more negligible and indefinite it was the bet¬ 
ter it would suit her purpose; she could then 
make him just “ something in the City.” 
There were thousands upon thousands of con¬ 
tented wives within twenty-five miles of 
Charing Cross whose husbands conveniently 
answered to this description; it would pass 
anywhere. “ Mrs. Godfrey Jobb, the latest 
arrival in the ranks of women novelists, whose 
husband (inset) is so well known in City 
circles. . . Yes, she could see it all, down 
to the last detail of the sort of gown she would 
wear for these full-page photographs in the 
illustrated papers, with Godfrey nicely tucked 
away in the bottom right-hand corner. But 
pretty as these visions might be, they were 
still too remote to alleviate the immediate 
difficulties with which she was confronted, 
and for the moment she wisely kept them to 
herself. 

Ella opened the door with a calm assurance 
of manner which would have further infuri¬ 
ated Mrs. Meadows had she been there to 
witness it. Ella was the sort of person who, 


69 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

had she been told to set the house on fire, 
might not have done so, but would certainly 
never have evinced the least surprise. How¬ 
ever, having merely set a match to the study 
fire in accordance with her instructions, she 
finished her duties for the night by bolting the 
back door. This was a detail to which Mrs. 
Meadows herself usually attended; the fur¬ 
ther detail that Mrs. Meadows happened to 
be somewhere on the other side of it did not 
appear to trouble her. 

Marjorie had flung off her costume and 
put on a pink dressing-gown; and when she 
walked into the study she found Godfrey bent 
over the fire in an endeavour to coax some life 
into it. There was something pathetic in the 
sight of this grown man messing about with 
little bits of coal; and all his efforts seemed 
only to make matters worse. She realised, 
more clearly than ever before, that in many 
ways, in the purely domestic sphere, he was 
just a huge overgrown baby; and for the first 
time that evening she smiled to herself; it 
was surprising how she had got used to notic¬ 
ing little things since she had become a novel¬ 
ist. She almost blushed at the thought; she 
felt that she was a different woman. . . . God¬ 
frey, quite oblivious of the fact that he had 
suddenly acquired a new wife, got up from 
70 


MRS. MEADOWS BREAKS OUT 

the hearthrug, pulled a chair in front of the 
fire, and unceremoniously told her to sit down. 
Without demur she did as she was told; and 
the thought flashed through her mind that it 
was rather nice of her to allow him to order 
her about. 

“ And now,” said Godfrey, taking out his 
pipe and filling it so slowly that it seemed to 
her that he had reluctantly resigned himself 
to a long discussion on the subject of her 
achievement, “ tell me all about it.” 

“ About what?” asked Marjorie, with an 
innocence of manner which was in itself a 
scandalous piece of deceit. 

“ The book,” said Godfrey, a little severely. 
“ In the first place, what’s it called?” 

“ At present,” said Marjorie, in an offhand 
tone, “ it’s called The Revolt of Eve.” The 
inference was that she had half a dozen other 
titles to choose from, all of them equally 
good. 

Godfrey shot a suspicious glance at her 
through the flame from the match with which 
he was lighting his pipe, and grunted. He 
didn’t quite like the sound of this title; it 
was certainly rather uncanny to have a wife 
who was capable of writing a whole book on 
the subject. 

“ It’s a novel, of course,” continued Mar- 

71 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

jorie. Godfrey hardly knew whether this was 
for better or for worse. “ And/’ she con¬ 
cluded triumphantly, “ I’m to get ten per 
cent.!” 

“ Of what?” Godfrey had instantly as¬ 
sumed his best business manner; his pipe was 
out of his lips and his eyes were lowered; the 
tone of his voice was that which he usually 
employed when he was discussing trade dis¬ 
counts and other topics equally divorced from 
literature. 

“ Ten per cent, of whatever it is, of course,” 
said Marjorie, with terrific emphasis and ex¬ 
treme annoyance. “ And anyway,” she 
flamed, “I’ve got an agreement on a huge 
sheet of paper, and it’s all signed and every¬ 
thing.” 

“ You’ve signed it?” 

“ I can write my own name, thank you,” 
said Marjorie with considerable hauteur. 

“ You read it through?” 

“ I did not,” said Marjorie, daring him to 
say another word on the subject. “ You see, 
he was an awfully nice man.” 

“ My poor child,” murmured Godfrey, 
gravely stroking her hair. “ Women in busi¬ 
ness!” he added, for the benefit of a heedless 
universe. “ Let’s hope for the best, and nine- 
pence a copy.” 

72 


MRS. MEADOWS BREAKS OUT 


“ Ninepence a copy!” cried Marjorie, with 
a lively incredulity. “ Only ninepence! ” 

“ If you don’t believe me,’ ! said Godfrey, 
drawing his chair a little closer, “ ask that 
awfully nice gentleman friend of yours.” 

“ But,” she protested, “ you make more 
than that on every box of your rotten old 
pills.” 

“ Gross,” murmured Godfrey, “ not net, my 
dear. And please remember that if it hadn’t 
been for my rotten old pills you’d never have 
been able to sit at home writing your wonder¬ 
ful book.” He put one arm around her. 
“ And now,” he added, “ will you tell me all 
about it?” 

The fire had at last begun to burn up; 
there was not a sound in the house or in the 
world outside it, and in the peace of the 
moment and in his nearness all the doubts and 
afflictions that had assailed her were washed 
from her mind. Everything, she assured her¬ 
self, would come right in the end. 

“ Oh, Godfrey,” she murmured, with a sigh 
of deep content, “ I do hope that you’ll like 
it!” 

“ I’ll do my level best,” said Godfrey. 
“ And now, what’s the idea behind it all?” 

Marjorie looked a little glum. All day long 
she had wanted to tell him about her book; 

73 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

but now that the opportunity had come she 
was half afraid to take it. 

“ Of course,” she said, “ I don’t suppose it 
will sound very thrilling as I tell it to you 
now. You know, when you read the synopsis 
of a serial story, don’t you wonder how on 
earth anyone could have written all the 
thousands and thousands of words that have 
gone before?” 

“ I don’t know; I never read serial stories.” 

“ You are a superior pig,” said Marjorie. 
“ Have you ever considered how utterly de¬ 
pendent men are on women from long before 
they’re born till after they’re dead?” 

“ If that’s the basic idea of your book,” 
said Godfrey, holding up a warning finger in 
front of her face, “ I shall be disappointed. 
I’ve heard it before.” 

“ There’s more to it than that,” said Mar¬ 
jorie, recapturing some of her enthusiasm. 
“ In the big things, and the little things, 
women are slaving for you all day long, from 
the moment you get up till the moment you 
choose to go back to bed. Hot water to shave 
with, clean clothes to wear, food to eat, the 
corner of your bed-clothes turned back-” 

“ If you’re trying to tell me that a man’s 
life consists of nothing more than shaving, 
dressing, eating, sleeping-” 

74 




MRS . MEADOWS BREAKS OUT 


“ Just you think it over/' said Marjorie 
with a toss of the head. “ What I say applies 
to most of the women in this world.” 

“ You entirely lose sight of the fact, my 
girl,” yawned Godfrey, as if he were already 
weary of the discussion, “ that men have to 
work” 

“ Quite,” murmured Marjorie. “ I have 
seen the poor creatures hurrying to catch their 
trains at five o’clock of an evening, pale and 
distraught after their heavy day’s labours.” 

Gravely and solicitously Marjorie stroked 
her husband’s cheek; he endured the caress 
with as good a grace as he could command. 

“ Anyway,” he burst out, “ your woman’s- 
work-is-never-done theories won’t cut any ice 
at this time of day. But-” 

“ That’s not all,” interposed Marjorie. 
“ The point is that you men, our lords and 
masters, with all your freedom to bring your 
great minds to bear on the problems of life as 
nine people out of ten in this country have to 
live it, in general make a mess of things. Look 
at some of our big cities!” 

# “ This discussion,” said Godfrey fero¬ 
ciously, “ gets more tedious the longer it con¬ 
tinues; and I don’t see where it’s leading us 
to. I thought you were going to tell me about 
your book.” 


75 



A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

“ Has it ever occurred to you,” asked Mar¬ 
jorie sweetly, without noticing his interrup¬ 
tion, “ that men are infinitely more dependent 
on women than women are on men?” 

“ Oh, Lord, we’re going back to where we 
started from.” 

“ Not quite,” replied Marjorie, with a 
patient toleration for his obtuseness. “ Has 
it ever occurred to you that women might 
decide to run this world for themselves, and 
that they could get on quite well without any 
men? As, in fact, many already do.” 

“ Bunkum and balderdash,” was Godfrey’s 
intelligent comment. “ For instance, what 
about children?” 

“ In that respect,” murmured Marjorie, 
doing her best to let him down lightly, “ I’ve 
always imagined that men were peculiarly 
dependent on women; whereas science may 
yet find a way out for us.” 

“ Go on,” said Godfrey, resigning any 
attempt at argument. “ But don’t forget that 
I’ve got to get up and go to work in the 
morning.” 

Marjorie allowed this sally to pass without 
protest. 

“ Therefore,” she continued, “ my book 
contemplates a universal strike of women— 
down to the last detail.” 


76 


MRS. MEADOWS BREAKS OUT 

“ Ah!” ejaculated Godfrey. “ Daylight at 
last! The Revolt of Eve!” He gave her a 
pat on the back. 

“ My book,” concluded Marjorie, “ de¬ 
scribes the career of a modern Joan of Arc, 
in a rather different sphere of activity.” 

“ Wonderful!” murmured Godfrey. He 
kissed her forehead. “ Wonderful brain!” he 
added. “ And I hope it sells by the hundred 
thousand!” He got up from his chair and 
with his back to the fireplace pontifically 
announced: 

“ I think you’d better be off to bed, my 
dear.” 

“ But,” protested Marjorie—and even in 
this monosyllable there was a tiny insistent 
note of independence which he could have 
sworn had never before been present in her 
voice—“ there’s something else I want to say 
to you. Your business, I mean.” 

“ My business!” cried Godfrey, at once 
suspicious and alert. The thought flashed 
through his mind that Figgins might have 
been getting at his wife. Impossible! 

“ What about it?” 

Marjorie got up and stood with both hands 
resting on the mantelshelf, ready at any 
moment to hide her head on his shoulder. 

“ Don’t you know that I’ve always hated 


77 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

being the wife of a—pill manufacturer?” She 
nearly choked over the words. “ And now that 
this chance has come—to both of us, I mean 
—why can’t we sell it and start all over 
again?” 

Godfrey flung himself on to the lounge, 
leaving her head in mid-air, thrust his hands 
into his pockets and stretched out his legs to 
their fullest extent. 

“ Well, I’m damned!” It was the highest 
eloquence of which he was capable in order 
to mark his disgust. “ And you turn on me 
like this at the very moment when I’ve got 
to put up the biggest fight of my life! To 
hell with Figgins and his twenty thousand 
pounds! I won’t be bought out and paid off! 
No man with any guts would!” 

He got on to his legs again and angrily 
paced up and down the room. 

“ But, Godfrey dear,” she pleaded from 
her lonely station at the fireplace, “ you don’t 
know how I hate that wretched pill business. 
The thought of you spending your life des¬ 
patching little boxes of pills-” 

“ I won’t have you talk like that,” he 
stormed. “ There’s more than that in run¬ 
ning a business—even a pill business,” he 
concluded savagely. 

Marjorie softly wept, but he affected to 


78 


MRS. MEADOWS BREAKS OUT 

ignore her tears. He would have liked to 
have given her a thorough shaking. 

“ If it’s the money you’re worrying about/’ 
she moaned, “ and the house and everything, 
well, I shall have some money now.” 

Godfrey paused in his stride and solemnly 
surveyed her. 

“ Believe me, my dear,” he announced 
earnestly, “ it takes a hell of a lot of nine- 
pences to keep you and this place going.” 

Godfrey, you’re a beast!” she shouted, 
flinging the tears away from her eyes. He 
looked her coldly up and down. 

“ I think,” he remarked, foolishly, reck¬ 
lessly, “ your head must have turned since 
this morning.” 

Before he quite realised what he had said 
she had flown past him and was out of the 
room. Instinctively he turned to follow her, 
but on the threshold he paused. 

“Silly!” he ejaculated, and frowned. It 
was an inadequate comment on a profoundly 
difficult situation. 

“ Curse the woman!” 

He frowned again; he felt that he was 
being a little unfair towards the object of his 
malediction. He had one more shot. 

“ Curse all women!” 

But even this comprehensive pronounce- 


79 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


ment failed to bring him the relief he sought, 
and with a feeling of deepest disgust for the 
world in general, himself included, and for 
women in particular, he flung himself into the 
seat she had occupied. It was still warm 
from her body; and the mere warmth of it 
was like a reproach to him. He sprang to 
his feet and angrily dragged his favourite 
armchair in front of the fire. With a desper¬ 
ate determination to make his limbs comfort¬ 
able, whatever the state of his mind, he 
placed both feet on the mantelshelf and medi¬ 
tatively began to refill his pipe. 

He had a great deal to think about, and 
Marjorie would have to wait. In fact, it 
would do no harm to give her time enough 
to cool down. Soon or late there would come 
the usual pretty scene of pacification. He 
was perfectly familiar with the whole pro¬ 
cedure. On the other hand he had to admit 
that this particular rumpus was altogether 
unparalleled in the history of their domestic 
intercourse; for sheer intensity of effort he 
had never known anything like it. He felt 
quite shaken by the whole affair, and even his 
pipe failed to smooth his ruffled feelings. 

Marjorie would have to wait; the problem 
of their reconciliation was easy. He wished 
he could have said as much of the problem pre- 

80 


MRS. MEADOWS BREAKS OUT 

sented by that financial lord who had put a 
pistol to his head that morning. He was 
further annoyed to discover that he could 
not dissociate Marjorie from this Figgins 
affair. His own wife had presented a similar 
ultimatum; they were both of them telling him 
to clear out. He thrust his chin deeper into 
his collar. If ever there had been a time in 
his career when he needed all the support and 
encouragement a wife could give him, it was 
now; and she had already traitorously de¬ 
serted him; she was actually fighting against 
him! Altogether it was a pretty poor out¬ 
look. If he accepted the challenge that Fig- 
gins had thrown at his business—and he really 
had no intention of doing otherwise—it would 
certainly mean very heavy expenditure, which, 
in turn, inferred certain economies at home; 
and every such economy would mean a re¬ 
proach, silent or expressed, from Marjorie, 
whose advice he had rejected! He shuddered. 
If he lost the duel he would be a ruined man; 
if he won, Marjorie would half regret the 
survival of the business; any number of nine- 
pences would never console her for the per¬ 
manence of that stigma with which she had 
chosen to brand herself. But whatever hap¬ 
pened she would have to put up with it. Even 
though he were to disregard any question of 

81 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

his personal dignity in the proposed negotia¬ 
tions, and even allowing that the offer made 
by Figgins was not to be despised, it was 
much too late in life for him to set out on 
another career. He knew of no suitable open¬ 
ing; and he even dimly suspected that his 
wife would be quite content to see him throw 
up business altogether. If funds ran low 
there were always those mythical ninepences 
of hers to fall back upon. ... He laughed, a 
bitter, negative sort of laugh, and allowed his 
feet to drop on to the hearth-rug with a ter¬ 
rific thump. 

“ My God,” he groaned. “ What a day! 
Too perfectly-” 

And broke off. He could have sworn that 
he had heard someone moving about on the 
ground floor. He knew that it couldn’t be 
Marjorie. She had slammed the door of her 
room, and there she would stay until he turned 
up to make his peace. He listened again. 
Someone was beating wildly on the front door! 
Quite unnecessarily he looked at his watch. 
It was nearly midnight, and even assuming 
that this was a midnight visitor, it was diffi¬ 
cult to see why this visitor should not make 
an orthodox use of the front-door bell. The 
hammering continued, even more wildly than 
before. 


82 



MRS. MEADOWS BREAKS OUT 

“ Someone ill,” muttered Godfrey and feel¬ 
ing that he had just about had enough of 
everything for one day, went out on to the 
landing and down the stairs. He switched 
on the porch light and flung open the door, 
with the immediate result that a bundle col¬ 
lapsed on the rug at his feet. 

“ Well,” gasped Godfrey, “ if this isn’t-” 

And again broke off. The bundle at his 
feet was Mrs. Meadows. She was more than 
ill; she was in a state of collapse; she was 
drunk and incapable. With a blasphemous 
objurgation to which her ears were mercifully 
sealed Godfrey dragged her to her feet, nearly 
breaking his back in the effort; and when he 
had contrived to restore her to the vertical it 
was the hardest work in the world to keep 
that mountain of flesh from toppling over 
again. Her breath stank in his nostrils and he 
turned his head to one side; whereupon he 
felt two fat arms close round his neck with a 
grip of desperation. 

“ Oh, sir,” she breathed into his ear, “ it’s 
so nice to be ’ome. I’m so ’appy.” And 
tried to plant her lips on his cheek. With a 
gentleness that did him credit, but with an 
equal determination, Godfrey lowered her to 
the floor. 

“ The Revolt of Eve,” he muttered sar- 

83 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


donically, looking down at the amorphous 
creature at his feet. 

The witticism, although it could have con¬ 
veyed nothing to Mrs. Meadows, appeared to 
register some effect on her mind. A look of 
terror suddenly illumined the dullness of her 
eyes; she was momentarily sane and con¬ 
scious of her condition; one hand clutched at 
her disordered hair and the other started 
fumbling with her bodice. 

“ Oh, sir,” she gasped. “ I couldn’t ’elp 
it. It was me ’eart.” And immediately re¬ 
lapsed into a state of complete unconscious¬ 
ness. Within another few seconds she was 
snoring heavily, with a ghost of a smile on 
her weatherbeaten face. 

Godfrey, after giving a few moments’ deep 
thought to the situation, rolled up one of the 
smaller rugs at the foot of the stairs and 
inserted it under her head; with the largest of 
all he covered her from head to foot; and 
switched off the light and stalked upstairs. 

When he opened the door of Marjorie’s 
room he found the light still burning. She 
was in bed, with her back turned to the door. 

“ Marjorie!” 

She made not the slightest movement; he 
had not expected her to do so; he had invari¬ 
ably to go through certain preliminaries before 
84 


MRS . MEADOWS BREAKS OUT 

he could make her respond to his overtures. 
However, she was going to get a surprise to¬ 
night. 

“ Marjorie, I think you ought to know. 
The cook’s drunk.” 

“ Godfrey!” 

She was up in a moment, with both hands 
on the pillow and her body leaning forward. 
Their quarrel, and everything associated with 
it, was forgotten; she could only realise, with 
a sickening dread, that, after all these years 
and all her efforts to avert the calamity, 
Mrs. Meadows’ secret was out. 

“ Where is she?” 

“ At the foot of the stairs, with a rug over 
her.” 

“ But, Godfrey, you aren’t-” 

“ I am,” said Godfrey, with an almost joy¬ 
ful emphasis. “ I can’t carry her, and I 
don’t suppose you want me to call in the 
police. Besides, she’s got enough drink inside 
her to keep her warm for a century or more.” 

“ But, Godfrey, you can't -” 

“ Believe me, I can, and will,” interrupted 
Godfrey, now filled with a righteous indig¬ 
nation, born of an acute resentment for this 
day’s shattering of his life’s peace. “ And as 
soon as she’s sober enough she will leave this 
house for good.” 


85 




A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

“ I shall give the poor dear one more 
chance/’ said Marjorie, getting back under 
the bedclothes. 

“ Oh!” 

Godfrey thoughtfully stroked his chin; the 
present position of their domestic affairs was 
even more difficult than he had first supposed. 
Had she already joined battle? 

“ Do you mind telling me,” he asked slowly, 
“ if this is the beginning of the great rebellion 
you were talking about?” 

She replied by switching off the reading- 
lamp beside her bed. Godfrey grunted, and 
walked off to his dressing-room. He was 
tired out. He carefully inspected his face 
in the mirror. His eyes were as dull and as 
lifeless as those of a blind man, and never be¬ 
fore had he noticed so many wrinkles around 
them. On the dressing-table he caught sight 
of the new and infallible safety-razor he had 
tried only that morning. At the time the 
tribulations associated with it had seemed 
enormously important; he was now able to 
view them with a better perspective, and 
smiled ruefully. 


86 


CHAPTER V 

THE MARCH OF FAME 

T ANGFIELD, Night Editor of the Morn - 
ing Sun, was at his wits’ end. For one 
whole hour he had skimmed the news of the 
world without discovering a single item that 
deserved more than an inconspicuous para¬ 
graph in the columns of the paper. He knew 
perfectly well that if the Morning Sun were to 
appear the day following without some sensa¬ 
tional announcement on its main news page, 
there would be an immediate vacancy on the 
staff. No excuse, however brilliantly devised, 
would secure for him a moment’s respite. His 
instructions were that if he couldn’t find the 
news he was to make it; whatever happened, 
or did not happen, in the world at large, the 
readers of the Morning Sun were not to be 
deprived of their early morning appetiser. 
Facts might be hard to come by; but they 
were quite unnecessary to his purpose, and it 
was up to him to employ that fertility of in¬ 
vention which was his chief qualification for 
the important post he held. To-night, un¬ 
fortunately, that faculty appeared to have 
utterly deserted him; he was already ob¬ 
sessed by the thought that somewhere round 
about eight o’clock the next morning he 
would hear an irate proprietorial voice over 

87 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

the telephone announcing his instant and ig¬ 
nominious dismissal. As on innumerable 
previous occasions that voice would snarl, 
“My public don’t want facts; they want 
stories, good human interest stories. If you’re 
too good for the job, clear out!” 

Usually these burdensome decisions did not 
fall on his shoulders alone. But with two or 
three members of the executive staff on the 
sick list, the Editor had chosen this night of 
nights to get himself involved in a squalid 
taxi-cab accident at the foot of Ludgate Hill. 
When the news reached the office, Langfield 
had a reporter despatched at once to the scene 
of the accident; but the Editor, who had only 
just picked himself up out of the gutter and 
was engaged in computing the number of his 
cuts and bruises, no sooner set eyes on this un¬ 
fortunate young man than he asked him what 
he meant by hanging around and wasting his 
time in that fashion, and forthwith dismissed 
him from the staff of that paper which he 
himself, in less tragic circumstances, con¬ 
spicuously adorned. The Editor had since 
’phoned up Langfield and told him to carry 
on as best he could. If, of course, the Editor 
had enjoyed the notoriety accorded a cinema 
star, a distinguished pugilist, or a fashionable 
divorcee, the accident itself might have been 

88 


THE MARCH OF FAME 


featured at some considerable length. Un¬ 
happily the Editor’s misfortunes would have 
awakened no sort of interest in his vast pub¬ 
lic; whereas they might have exhibited some 
perturbation had they been told that the car¬ 
toonist to the paper, or the gentleman who 
supplied them with good things for the next 
day’s meetings, had nearly lost his life in a 
nasty smash. Langfield sighed and wearily 
picked up his telephone, which was insistently 
ringing. 

“ Explosion at Woolwich Arsenal,” an¬ 
nounced a voice at the other end. “ No lives 
lost, but many houses damaged in the 
vicinity.” 

“ I don’t believe it,” growled Langfield as 
he put down the receiver. However, he had 
the star reporter sent down to investigate, and 
called for young Jackson. 

Jackson was the son of a friend of the pro¬ 
prietor. At Cambridge he had contributed 
light articles to the Granta and sonnets to the 
Review; in consequence he was recognised 
at the Union as an authority on the Press. He 
had been taken on to the staff of the Morning 
Sun for the purpose of contributing leaderettes 
on the topics of life and death and love and 
beauty. His articles, however, lacking three 
of these attributes, speedily succumbed to the 


89 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

fourth: they died; since when their author 
had precariously existed under Langfield’s 
direction. His only successful piece of work 
to date was a good human interest story he 
had extracted from the death of a dog that 
had been run over by an L.C.C. tramcar in the 
Old Kent Road. 

“ There’s been an explosion at Woolwich 
Arsenal,” said Langfield gruffly, hoping with 
all his heart that he was speaking the truth. 
“Go down and find how many windows have 
been broken.” Langfield knew that there was 
nothing like figures for helping the public to 
visualise a situation. “ A road of houses 
wrecked” was much less forcible than “12,476 
windows irretrievably ruined.” 

Half an hour later Jackson got on the 
’phone to him. “ I don’t think there’s been 
an explosion,” he reported plaintively. “ I’ve 
found five broken windows,” he continued, 
despite some strange noises that came over 
the line to him, “but they don’t seem to be 
very recent.” 

“ God save me from these Cambridge men! ” 
moaned Langfield as he flung the receiver on 
to its rest, and once more delved into the pile 
of news that lay around him, and now nearly 
submerged him. For one delirious moment 
he seriously contemplated placing on the main 

90 


THE MARCH OF FAME 


news page a notice: “We much regret to have 
to inform our readers that to-day there is 
nothing of the least interest to report in the 
world’s affairs. It is, however, confidently 
anticipated that this deplorable reign of uni¬ 
versal peace will be succeeded by sensational 
developments within the next twenty-four 
hours.” However, Langfield had a wife and 
three children out at Twickenham to support, 
and regretfully discarded this brilliant proj¬ 
ect. Finally, with the gasp of a man driven 
to a last measure of desperation, he clutched 
angrily at a pile of expensive foreign cables 
that he had already rejected. 

It was sheerly incredible. Apparently the 
whole of the nations of the world had con¬ 
spired to bring down upon the earth the tor¬ 
por that now enveloped it. His face bright¬ 
ened when he came across one usable item of 
news he had previously missed. A woman in 
Vienna, according to a correspondent the 
Morning Sun maintained in that city at a 
five-figure cost per annum, had given birth to 
quintuplets. Langfield at once gave instruc¬ 
tions that as much as possible was to be made 
of this world event, and that the paper’s 
records were to be searched for parallel per¬ 
formances. He grimly reflected that it was 
about time their Viennese correspondent 

91 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


showed signs of life: in view of his protracted 
silence this piece of information probably cost 
the paper something over fifty pounds. How¬ 
ever, this was the Foreign Editor’s funeral, 
and if the Foreign Editor would insist on 
catching a bad cold every time he put his head 
out of doors, leaving him to do a great deal of 
his work ... Langfield suddenly broke the 
train of these uncharitable reflections and 
stared avidly at the flimsy he was about to 
crush in the palm of his hand. It was a mes¬ 
sage from their Rome correspondent, and 
read: “ Conti well-known Italian explorer 
now resting home Perugia reports discovery 
Pacific island complete system gynocratic 
government authenticated details follow.” 

For at least ten minutes Langfield pondered 
this highly condensed narrative, and then 
started to make a few rapid notes. Mean¬ 
while he gave orders that Jackson was to re¬ 
port to him immediately he returned. When, 
five minutes later, that youth put his head 
inside the door, Langfield turned on him 
fiercely. 

“ Jackson,” he roared, “ever heard of Conti, 
the great Italian explorer?” 

Jackson shook his head. He had never 
before seen Langfield in such a state of excite¬ 
ment, and wondered where on earth he was 


92 


THE MARCH OF FAME 


going to be sent in search of this notability. 

“ Jackson, you’ve been educated. What do 
you know about gynocracy?” 

“ Nothing at all.” 

“ Then,” boomed Langfield, “clear off to 
the Library and let me have fifteen hundred 
words on the subject by nine o’clock.” 

* * * * * * 

Two morning newspapers were delivered 
regularly at Godfrey’s residence—the Times 
and the Morning Sun. The immaculate pages 
of the Times he religiously preserved for con¬ 
sumption on his way to town; the Morning 
Sun only came into the house because Mar¬ 
jorie insisted on having it. She maintained, 
in the face of all criticism, that the pages of 
the Times were much too large for her to han¬ 
dle without unnatural exertion and that she 
could never find her way about the paper 
without the use of a compass and a pair of 
binoculars. Godfrey, however, was not above 
glancing through her paper over breakfast: 
he found it, in fact, a not unsalutary experi¬ 
ence to have his vitals thoroughly wrung 
with the reports of the various calamities that 
were about to overtake the nation, and after¬ 
wards to turn to the sedate and prosperous 
pages of the Times and find that the Govern- 


93 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


ment were everlastingly doing the right thing 
in the right way. So long as the Times ap¬ 
peared with its twenty-four or twenty-eight 
imperturbable pages Godfrey felt every as¬ 
surance for the immediate future. 

This morning, however, before he had time 
to glance at a single headline, the Morning 
Sun did really succeed in sending a thrill of 
apprehension through him. In that day’s 
issue there appeared the first announcement of 
the greatest benefit ever conferred upon the 
human race. The announcement did not al¬ 
together take him by surprise. Several weeks 
had elapsed since Mr. Figgins had written to 
him from a private address in the West End, 
intimating with a dangerous politeness that 
the proprietor of Jobb’s Hepatic Pilules, Ltd., 
would either speedily accept the offer so hand¬ 
somely put up to him or take the conse¬ 
quences. Within the limits of business ter¬ 
minology the nature of these consequences 
was specifically stated. Mr. Figgins had 
written: “ Having had the privilege of spend¬ 
ing an agreeable half-hour with you, my dear 
Mr. Jobb, I realise, with something of a pang, 
that your business, which to-day is worth not 
less than twenty thousand pounds, may, with¬ 
in a fraction of the time taken to build it up, 
have ceased to exist. I leave for America the 


94 


THE MARCH OF FAME 


day after to-morrow.” To which Godfrey 
had replied: “ I have merely to remark that 
the confidence you repose in the Chemical Cor¬ 
poration of America is equalled only by my 
own in the loyalty of my customers.” This, as 
Godfrey well knew, was merely a piece of 
grandiloquence not even worth the paper it 
was written on. 

This first announcement of the world’s 
greatest remedy for the ills of the liver must 
have been something of a disappointment to 
Mr. Figgins’s advertising ideals. It was not 
illustrated by a Royal Academician; nor was 
the lyrical descriptive matter the work of the 
Poet Laureate. However, as an onslaught on 
the hearts and minds of the readers of the 
Morning Sun it was equal to anything in the 
editorial columns of that journal. It was 
numbered the first of a series under the gen¬ 
eral heading of “ The Little Liver Ills of the 
Great,” together with a sub-heading, “What 

might have been if-” Napoleon was at 

once introduced to explain this aposiopesis. 
The imperial features were illustrated under 
two aspects. One portrait presented a 
saturnine and embittered countenance, gaz¬ 
ing with a gloomy indifference upon the san¬ 
guinary battle-fields of a stricken Europe; the 
other, a genial and engaging personality, the 

95 



A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


Imperial Father of a beautiful France, sur¬ 
rounded by his loved ones, with the Empress 
Josephine as the Guardian Angel of them all. 
It was then briefly explained that the Em¬ 
peror, throughout his life, had been cursed 
with liver trouble, which accounted for his 
stormy and tyrannical behaviour, which in 
turn affected, with unhappy consequences, the 
fate of nations. This line of argument led up 
to the grand conclusion that the course of his¬ 
tory would have been changed for the better 
could the great Napoleon have availed him¬ 
self of Aunt Mary’s Liver Pills, the all-in cure 
for every infirmity of the liver. Aunt Mary, 
it was explained, was a wise old lady who had 
passed all her days in a secluded village some¬ 
where in the West Country, where many of 
Nature’s secrets had been revealed to her, one 
of these being the formula for the pills with 
which her name was now associated. Pri¬ 
vately compounded for use in her own family 
and a privileged circle of friends, these infal¬ 
lible pills, having been tested and approved 
through three generations, were now at the 
service of the community, at the price of three 
shillings a box. The name of the Chemical 
Corporation of America nowhere appeared. 
At the foot of the advertisement it was an¬ 
nounced that Lord Byron would be the second 
96 


THE MARCH OF FAME 


celebrity to appear in this engaging series. 

If Godfrey had wanted further evidence 
that the whole affair was an actual declaration 
of war on that particular pill with which his 
own name was associated, the slogan adopted 
by Aunt Mary would have supplied it: 
“Double the price—ten times the benefit!” 
Such was Aunt Mary’s battle-cry, and God¬ 
frey had to admit that it was an exceedingly 
good one: the beautiful candour of its first 
half engendered what confidence was neces¬ 
sary for the acceptance of the second. God¬ 
frey sighed, and turned to the next page. At 
the bottom left-hand corner he happened to 
notice one of his own advertisements, and has¬ 
tily averted his eyes. Compared with Aunt 
Mary’s lavish propaganda it was such a pitiful 
effort that he disowned it even before the 
court of his own conscience. He didn’t pause 
to read it; there was, in fact, nothing to read. 
“ Jobb’s Hepatic Pilules—Good for the Liver 
— is. 3d. a Box”—these three lines in about 
an inch of space were his sole defence against 
the big battalions that Figgins had ranged 
against him; and he asked himself, not for 
the first time during these weeks of waiting, 
whether he ought not to have pocketed his 
pride—and the twenty thousand pounds 
down. 


97 


A COMED Y OF WOMEN 

At the station he purchased another copy of 
the Morning Sun. He had never done such 
a thing before, but this morning he succumbed 
to the fascination of Aunt Mary’s irresistible 
appeal; it had for him a mournful interest 
such as he might have taken in his own death- 
warrant. As a person of some culture and 
refinement it would have been easy for him to 
have dismissed contemptuously the whole af¬ 
fair from his mind; but he had to admit that 
Aunt Mary’s appeal was not directed to per¬ 
sons of culture and refinement, but to the 
average reader of the Morning Sun who had 
tears to shed for the tragic history of the 
Empress Josephine and money to spend on 
three-shilling boxes of pills. He was about 
to put the paper under the seat when, by the 
merest accident, his eyes happened to fall on 
the main news headlines of the day. The 
first ran: A Lost Island of the Pacific 
where Women Rule; the second: Men as 
Beasts of Burden; the third: No Strikes 
—No Wars —No Poverty. 

Langfield had done the job thoroughly: 
the two-line message from Rome had been ex¬ 
panded into two columns of thrilling reading. 
The unknown Conti was hailed as one of the 
greatest explorers since the days of Columbus, 
and a pretty picture was drawn of the re- 
98 


THE MARCH OF FAME 


turned wanderer resting among the vines 
around his hillside home overlooking the val¬ 
ley of the Tiber. Even his photograph, or 
what purported to be his photograph, ap¬ 
peared in the body of the article; but the 
beard and whiskers appropriate to a hardy 
explorer so obscured the features of the sub¬ 
ject portrayed that Conti’s own mother could 
not have challenged its authenticity. The 
tone of the writing throughout was in thor¬ 
ough keeping with the sensational nature of 
the headlines. The description of the down¬ 
trodden males who maintained a precarious 
foothold on this long-lost island might have 
been done by the world’s most embittered 
spinster, and grim emphasis was laid on the 
fact that the poor creatures never thought of 
going on strike. Jackson’s contribution on 
gynocracy cited the best historical authorities, 
enlivened by illustrative references largely 
drawn out of his own imagination. In con¬ 
clusion, readers were referred to the back 
page, where a small cross on a map of the 
Pacific denoted the conjectured position of 
this remarkable realm. 

As the day’s sensation the whole thing was 
not quite up to the standard set by the pro¬ 
prietor of the Morning Sun. It was nothing 
out of the way for the paper to record the oc- 

99 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

currence of an event at least twenty-four 
hours before it actually took place, so Lang- 
field was allowed no credit for his intelligent 
anticipation of the authenticated details 
promised him. However, the irate proprie¬ 
torial voice did not interrupt his morning 
slumbers; nor was his peace of mind subse¬ 
quently disturbed by a second message from 
Rome he found awaiting him at the office, to 
the effect that Conti had turned out to be a 
rogue and an impostor and was now in prison 
on several other charges. 

For the first time in his life Godfrey ar¬ 
rived in town with his copy of the Times still 
unopened, and he was shocked to find that 
he had spent the greater part of the journey 
in reading from beginning to end this farrago 
of nonsense about lost islands and women. Of 
course it was nonsense; but he couldn’t help 
feeling that it substantiated to an uncanny 
degree the equally ridiculous story of Mar¬ 
jorie’s book. There was no longer any reason 
to doubt that The Revolt of Eve was a ridicu¬ 
lous story. During the last couple of months 
the book had been set up in type, printed and 
bound, and six copies had been delivered to 
the author; and this succession of events, so 
far as Godfrey could make out, comprised the 
whole history of the publication to the world 
100 


THE MARCH OF FAME 


of The Revolt of Eve . It would be inaccurate 
to say that no living soul, apart from those 
few immediately concerned in its production, 
had read the thing. Quite a number of the 
author’s friends, once they were alive to the 
existence of the book, had delicately hinted 
how delighted they would be to receive one 
of the spare copies which her beneficent pub¬ 
lishers had doubtless presented to her for free 
distribution; with the result that Mrs. 
Meadows’ life was made miserable for a 
month by her mistress’s constant requisitions 
for string and brown paper. A photographer 
asked if he might have the honour of taking 
her portrait for inclusion in his gallery of dis¬ 
tinguished authors; but Marjorie was unable 
to accept the invitation because, after this con¬ 
siderable outlay on copies of her own work, 
she found that she had no money left with 
which to buy a new frock for the occasion. A 
Press cutting agency solicited the honour of 
her patronage, and Godfrey, under extreme 
pressure, was persuaded to send them a 
cheque for one guinea in payment for one hun¬ 
dred notices. Two arrived within the course 
of the following month. The first, taken from 
a provincial journal with a weekly circulation 
of five or six hundred copies, announced at 
column length that The Revolt of Eve by 

101 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


Mrs. Godfrey Jobb was one of the world’s 
outstanding works and a portentous sign of 
the times; and the journal’s five or six hun¬ 
dred readers were advised to watch the career 
of this successful young authoress. Godfrey 
had the greatest difficulty in dissuading her 
from sending off an effusive letter of thanks to 
this unknown but highly successful reviewer. 
The second notice, from a London daily, 
whose circulation figures were so huge that 
Marjorie was never quite sure whether they 
ran up to millions or billions, nearly broke her 
heart; the Press cutting people were brutes 
ever to have sent it to her. She resented 
every word of the review, the least objection¬ 
able remark being that the book was “unpunc¬ 
tuated, unreadable, and, we imagine, unread.” 
Her hands trembled when she received the 
third, and final, instalment of her hundred 
Press cuttings, and she was relieved to find 
that it wasn’t a review at all, but merely 
an entry under “ Books Received.” Never¬ 
theless, when the manager of the local book¬ 
shop considerately informed her that the best 
of the Press cutting firms missed at least 
twenty-five per cent, of the notices they were 
supposed to trace, she at once wrote a strong 
letter of protest to her own agency. In their 
reply they suggested that they would gladly 
102 


THE MARCH OF FAME 


undertake a special search, the fee for which 
would be two guineas. Their letter, which 
she passed on to Godfrey without comment, 
only called forth from him a gruff remark to 
the effect that she would do much better to 
spend the money on a new hat. This was the 
first time in her experience that he had ever 
advised her to embark on any such expendi¬ 
ture; and his reply so abashed her that she 
failed to follow up the opening presented. 

But Godfrey, although he had said very lit¬ 
tle on the subject, was feally deeply grieved 
that The Revolt of Eve should have disap¬ 
peared like a plummet into the void. Certain¬ 
ly his first encounter with the name Mrs. 
Godfrey Jobb on the title-page of a book had 
given him rather a turn; and when he had 
asked what had induced her to assume this 
description she could only reply that it had a 
substantial air about it and seemed better 
suited to this style of book than plain Mar¬ 
jorie Jobb, which, she deposed, sounded aw¬ 
ful. There might be something in the explana¬ 
tion, but it was unsatisfactory; he had never 
thought of his wife as Mrs. Godfrey Jobb, 
and never would, though she produced ten 
thousand successors to The Revolt of Eve. 
He was not particularly proud of his own 
name, but he didn’t quite like the idea of his 

103 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


wife parading it about in this fashion. How¬ 
ever, as events had turned out, there was 
little danger of this name, in whatever form, 
suffering from an excess of publicity; and he 
would be delighted if Marjorie could extract 
any sort of consolation from these Morning 
Sun revelations about a lost island in the Pa¬ 
cific where women ruled, and the rest of it. 
These charitable reflections set up quite a 
glow in his breast, and he had momentarily 
forgotten about Mr. Figgins and all his works 
when he arrived at his office. The respite did 
not last long. The whole staff—from the 
clerk down to the pale-faced girl, with the 
office boy in between—were engaged in a mi¬ 
nute and apparently enjoyable examination of 
the career of the great Napoleon, viewed in 
the light of Aunt Mary’s discovery. The pro¬ 
prietor of Jobb’s unhonoured and unsung 
Hepatic Pilules, with a shadow over his coun¬ 
tenance, summarily dismissed them to their 
posts and passed to his own room, the door of 
which slammed thunderously. 

“Nerves!” murmured the pale-faced 
girl; and continued to read about the Empress 
Josephine, as she was, and as she might have 
been. 


104 


CHAPTER VI 

MR. RANDAL FRERE 


TV/fR. RANDAL FRERE occupied a bed- 
sitting-room and a kitchen-scullery on 
the fourth and uppermost floor of a house in 
Duke Street, within a stone’s throw of the 
Little Theatre. The bed-sitting-room was 
admirably devised to serve its dual purpose; 
in fact there were occasions when, after some 
nocturnal festivity, Mr. Randal Frere was 
quite unable to locate the bed in its secret lair 
and had perforce to spend the night on the 
floor. On these occasions, too, a complete 
set of the Encyclopedia Britannica really 
justified the large amount of space it occu¬ 
pied in these restricted quarters: a cushion 
superimposed on a few of these bulky vol¬ 
umes provided a pillow for his head which, 
he invariably felt, was liable to drop off at 
any moment. In a normal condition, when 
he was perfectly competent to take care of 
himself, he was able to make use of the 
combination lounge-bed. However, on the 
one occasion when he had attempted to do so 
without taking the necessary precautions— 
these requiring an amount of mental concen¬ 
tration of which he was altogether incapable 
at the time—by a miraculous transfiguration 
of his immediate surroundings he had found 


105 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


himself not merely off the lounge but under 
the bed. Thereafter, whatever the uncer¬ 
tainty of his gait, he had always made a 
point of steering clear of this surprising con¬ 
trivance. 

All things considered, the bed-sitting-room 
was a tolerable abode by day or by night; but 
the kitchen-scullery was the abomination of 
his life. It was so small that it was almost 
impossible to make a half-circular turn with¬ 
out bringing one’s head into violent impact 
with one or more of the saucepans that hung 
from just below the ceiling; it was a mercy 
that the din they created as a result of these 
collisions partly drowned the vituperation 
they called forth. Saucepans, indeed, were 
the curse of Mr. Randal Frere’s waking ex¬ 
istence on its domestic side; and, on the aver¬ 
age, he dreamed about them once a month. 
His nightmare conception of hell was a place 
where myriads of tintinnabulant saucepans 
were for ever clanging around his head. 
Wherever he had taken up his abode—and 
in his time he had made many moves—he 
had found quantities of old saucepans; and 
the saucepans he fondly imagined he had left 
behind him invariably contrived to get them¬ 
selves tucked away somewhere in his belong¬ 
ings. On the occasion of his last move his 
106 


MR. RANDAL FRERE 


landlady had made a frantic last minute 
appearance, brandishing aloft two decrepit 
saucepans which she had determinedly de¬ 
posited on the floor of the taxicab. The 
realisation that saucepans were so invincibly 
attracted towards him that they were able to 
withstand the natural instincts of a landlady 
so intimidated him that he had since meekly 
submitted to their noisy dominion. 

Another abomination in this chamber of 
horrors was the gas-ring. There was never by 
any chance a match in the place with which to 
light it; and when, as usually happened, he 
had recourse to his petrol-lighter, which leaked 
badly, he found it interesting to speculate on 
the course of events should Nature decide to 
put in operation her hitherto immutable laws. 
About one quarter of the floor space was 
occupied by a structure that was neither a 
sink nor a lavatory basin, but adequately 
served both purposes as occasion demanded. 
The only danger attaching to its use was the 
absence of an overflow pipe. Whenever, 
therefore, Randal heard resounding signals 
from the floor beneath he paid a visit to 
the kitchen-scullery and turned the tap off. 
He never allowed this not infrequent disaster 
to perturb him. The flood would drain away 
of its own accord within twenty-four hours, 

107 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


and where it drained to was no concern of 
his; moreover, the people on the floor below 
were an easy-going couple and much too 
engrossed in themselves to worry about the 
condition of the ceiling. 

Mr. Randal Frere, then, on the purely do¬ 
mestic side, was very much of a bachelor. 
There was certainly a woman who, vaguely 
enough, was supposed to come in occasionally 
to do things for him; but her visits, like her 
wages, were highly irregular. Mrs. Cushion, 
who kept five small children clean and well- 
fed on forty-five shillings a week, although 
she did not disapprove of Mr. Randal Frere 
personally, disapproved of everything about 
him. The sopping wet floor-boards of the 
kitchen-scullery were a constant affront to her 
orderly habits, and nine visits out of ten she 
would inform him that there were nights when 
she couldn’t get a wink of rest for thinking of 
that tap always on the run. Randal’s usual 
response was to shoo her out of the room and 
shut the kitchen-scullery door on her back, 
leaving her to get on with the one job that did 
not disturb his peace—that of polishing up 
the saucepans. Had he not been convinced 
in his own mind that she was a perfectly 
honest woman he could have sworn that his 
disbursements for the purchase of wire- 
108 


MR. RANDAL FRERE 


brushes must have been spent in other direc¬ 
tions. 

If Mrs. Cushion’s wages were nearly always 
in arrear, it was not that Randal deliberately 
withheld them: more often than not he simply 
had not in the wide world a spare half-crown 
over and above what was absolutely necessary 
for the pursuit of his evening’s employment. 
On the surface this pursuit of employment 
might easily have been mistaken for the pur¬ 
suit of pleasure. Most evenings of the week, 
towards dinner-time, Mr. Randal Frere would 
emerge from his fourth-floor attic and slowly 
descend the chilly stone steps of the staircase, 
whose exiguous carpet did not extend to his 
own quarters. Ostensibly Mr. Randal Frere 
was going out to dine; actually, if the day 
happened to be at all late in the month, he had 
already dined at home, on biscuits and cheese 
and a pint of bitter. Mr. Randal Frere’s rule 
of life was never to take an unnecessary risk; 
and because he had no choice but to frequent 
the more expensive restaurants, he made a 
point of never entering them with an expen¬ 
sive appetite. As a result of this public ab¬ 
stemiousness, Mr. Randal Frere had earned a 
wide reputation, in a very limited circle, for 
being the smallest eater in London. Occa¬ 
sionally, when funds were high, he would dine 


109 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

lavishly and riotously with a few worth-while 
friends, and afterwards gravely announce that 
he would have to pay for this excess by diet¬ 
ing himself for at least a month; and diet 
himself he would, on biscuits and cheese and 
a pint of bitter. For all beholders it was an 
education in self-discipline to see him wave 
aside a variegated carte de jour and stead¬ 
fastly adhere to an omelette nature and a 
solitary liqueur. 

For Mr. Randal Frere, though poor, was a 
proud man. It was generally understood 
among his friends and acquaintances that he 
enjoyed a small private income. Literally this 
was true: he had twenty pounds invested in 
the Post Office Savings Bank, which brought 
him in, at compound interest, a small private 
income of something over ten shillings per 
annum. However, Mr. Randal Frere had so 
far managed to avoid falling back upon this 
ultimate source of supply; he had indeed 
sternly resolved that should he ever find it 
necessary to have recourse to it, he would blue 
the whole lot in one night and drown himself 
the next morning. Times innumerable Mr. 
Randal Frere had found himself on the brink 
of this personal tragedy, and each and every 
time some little thing had turned up at the 
last moment to save his life. The little thing 
110 


MR. RANDAL FRERE 


would be either a paragraph, an article, a book 
to review, or, but very rarely, a private com¬ 
mission from some person of means. In the 
main, salvation came by way of a paragraph; 
Mr. Randal Frere lived on paragraphs: little 
newsy anecdotes about people prominent or 
notorious, appropriate to the gossip columns 
of the more frivolous newspapers and calcu¬ 
lated to titillate the occupants of London’s 
Underground and her suburban railway car¬ 
riages. Such were the paragraphs that were 
the breath of life to Mr. Randal Frere. His 
somewhat cadaverous and clean-shaven fea¬ 
tures would light up whenever a word 
dropped from the lips of the mighty that he 
could turn into pounds, shilling and pence. It 
would be true to say that time and again a 
word had saved his life. During one of the 
darkest hours of his career—when, in fact, he 
was on his way to the nearest branch of the 
Post Office Savings Bank, preparatory to a 
final visit to the Embankment in the early 
hours of the following morning—he had met 
a long-lost friend in Bond Street who had 
introduced him to the lady accompanying 
him. This lady turned out to be the Hon. 
Letitia Lovebody; and she had casually re¬ 
marked, while gazing into the florist’s window 
outside which they were halted, “ Aren’t 


111 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


those roses too beautiful?” The next morning 
there duly appeared in the premier picture 
paper a paragraph beginning: “ Yesterday 
afternoon the Hon. Letitia Lovebody was 
telling me about her lifelong passion for roses. 
...” Mr. Randal Frere received only half 
a guinea for the paragraph, but it restored 
his economic balance and postponed his con¬ 
templated visit to the Embankment. 

Occasionally he was commissioned to under¬ 
take similar work on a more considerable 
scale. His nominal fee for what he termed 
“ personal publicity ” was one hundred guin¬ 
eas a month; and once he very nearly got it 
as a result of an inquiry from a prominent 
kettle manufacturer in the Midlands, whose 
wife’s social aspirations had risen with her 
husband’s fortunes. He accepted an invita¬ 
tion to spend a week in the bosom of the 
kettle manufacturer’s family, after receiving 
twenty-five guineas in advance, in order to 
collect data for the work in hand. He stuck 
the job, and the manufacturer’s wife, for 
three days, and on the fourth left the house 
for good before breakfast. The letter he 
handed to an astonished maid stated that his 
wife’s sudden illness necessitated his imme¬ 
diate return to town and enclosed a cheque 
for twenty-five guineas, with many apologies 
112 


MR. RANDAL FRERE 


and regrets. After this experience Mr. Ran¬ 
dal Frere felt that he was justified of his 
boast that he had a soul above money. 

The kettle manufacturer, who was no fool 
and quickly surmised the real reason for Ran¬ 
dal's flight from the house, savagely expressed 
the hope that the sight of that vulgar but use¬ 
ful domestic utensil, a tin kettle, would never 
fail to bring haunting memories into the young 
fop’s life; he would have been delighted had 
he known that saucepans were already one of 
the curses of his late visitor’s menage. He also 
roundly declared that there never was—and 
he hoped for the sake of some unfortunate 
woman that there never would be—a Mrs. 
Randal Frere: in which judgment he was quite 
unjust to Randal. Mrs. Randal Frere well and 
truly existed, though under what name her 
husband was quite unable to say. Their 
impetuous marriage had taken place three 
years before; her precipitate departure six 
months later. Mrs. Randal Frere, before her 
marriage, had been one of those fortunate 
women who never seem to be without money 
to spend. Immediately she saw that very 
little was likely to be forthcoming from her 
lawful husband she set out to replace him, 
leaving Randal with a broken heart, which 
very speedily mended, and twenty pounds in 

113 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


the Post Office Savings Bank. Had she known 
of the existence of this sacred sum she might 
have volunteered to stay with him a week 
longer; but Randal, who had found out more 
about women in six months than in the whole 
of his preceding twenty-six years, decided 
that an additional week’s education would be 
too dear at the price, and gave her his blessing 
on her departure. There was no scene, no 
fuss, no frenzied altercation. Randal was a 
realist, and on his approved principle of never 
taking an unnecessary risk at once recognised 
that this highly chic creature was entirely 
beyond his resources. During the past two 
years they had not infrequently passed each 
other in the street. She was never by any 
chance unaccompanied and gave him no more 
than a fleeting glance of recognition. But it 
was a merry little glance and said, plainly 
enough, “ You’re still rather a dear; but 
really, you can’t afford me, can you now?” 
And because he knew that he couldn’t, Ran¬ 
dal never wanted to reproach her. Frocks and 
dinners and dances, and other futilities, were 
as essential to her as light and air and water; 
and if it didn’t much matter to her where they 
came from so long as she got them, this was 
not her fault; it was the way she was made. 
Always a certain poignant wistfulness would 
114 


MR. RANDAL FRERE 


seize him at these unexpected and momentary 
encounters; but such was his philosophy of 
life that he was able to extract a modicum of 
private enjoyment from the knowledge that 
the woman was, after all, his wife. 

But to-night Randal’s philosophy of life 
was a little dented. For one thing, he was 
down to his last pound note. Certainly it had 
done him excellent service during the last few 
days. At least a dozen times, when he was 
in the company of comparatively opulent 
friends, he had slowly withdrawn it from an 
otherwise empty note-case in order to make 
some trifling disbursement; and never once 
had these friends failed to interrupt him with, 
“ I say, old chap, don’t bother; I’ve plenty 
of small change.” But all this was a minor 
trouble, if only because it was not unusual; 
the immediate and insuperable problem of his 
life centred around the last of the half-dozen 
boiled shirts that remained in his wardrobe. 
Through an apparent oversight on the part 
of Mrs. Cushion five of them were dirty, and 
the sixth, which he had counted on to survive 
another evening’s wear, proved to be just 
unequal to the strain. Incidentally, it may or 
may not have been an oversight, on Randal’s 
part, that Mrs. Cushion’s last three laundry 
bills were still unpaid. However, Randal was 

115 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

not the sort of person to appear in public in 
soiled linen, even though he might encounter 
a thousand Letitia Lovebodys with lips of 
liquid gold; and tantalising as it might be to 
reflect that within a hundred and fifty yards’ 
radius of his fourth-floor apartment there were 
probably thousands of impeccable boiled 
shirts, he was not prepared to break into 
his last pound note and buy one. Rather he 
would spend the evening at home, and dine 
exclusively, and at his own expense, on bis¬ 
cuits and cheese and a pint of bitter. He had, 
in fact, already done so. Characteristically 
enough, he had left three biscuits at the bot¬ 
tom of the tin and a mouthful of cheese: he 
regarded an absolutely bare cupboard as being 
one of those unnecessary risks he so much 
deprecated. Having removed to the kitchen- 
scullery the remnants of his meal he drew up 
to the gas fire the combination lounge-bed 
and settled down for what promised to be 
an infernally dull evening. No one would 
dream of calling on him at that hour, because 
it was beyond belief that Mr. Randal Frere 
should ever find it necessary to pass a lonely 
evening at home. 

Languidly and dejectedly Randal picked 
up his copy of the Morning Sun. It was only 
that morning’s issue, but already the news in 
116 


MR. RANDAL FRERE 


it seemed as vapid and as unattractive as a 
dish of cold stew. Incredible that, a few hours 
earlier, he should have opened the paper with 
pleasurable expectancy! Certainly there was 
a little thing of his own on the leader page, 
entitled, “ What would Romeo have thought 
of the modern Juliet?” It now seemed as 
stale and unprofitable as the rest of the paper. 
He took a last disparaging glance at the news 
columns. There was the usual hair-raising 
scare of the day: something to do with a lot 
of wild women on an equally incredible 
island: poor stuff, all of it. The world must 
have been a pretty dull show yesterday if the 
Morning Sun couldn’t do better than that. 

. . . The sheets dropped on to the floor and 
his eyes roved the room in an endeavour to 
find something that might engage his interest. 
There was nothing, of course; every object in 
it was too dreadfully familiar: a weary-look- 
ing portable typewriter, on which no one let¬ 
ter was in alignment with any other; a series 
of French and Italian views—of places he 
had never visited but which nevertheless gave 
him local colour for a variation of his usual 
theme, “ Lunching at the so-and-so yesterday 
. . or “I was walking down Piccadilly 
. . —and a bureau containing the manu¬ 
scripts of a play and a novel, both unfinished 

117 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

and likely to remain so, and the first line of 
some verse entitled, “ Sonnet to Christina ” 
—unproceeded with because, before he mar¬ 
ried the lady, he had not the time to work on 
it, and, after marriage, no inclination. There 
were some bookshelves on either side of the 
fireplace, but the only really considerable vol¬ 
umes on them were Stephen’s Commentaries 
on the Laws of England and Salmond’s Law 
of Torts. These were relics of his Oxford 
days, and the only reason why he had retained 
them was that the secondhand price offered 
him by his bookseller was so iniquitously low 
that he had decided they were worth more to 
him as mere pieces of furniture. In moments 
of deepest depression he sometimes turned to 
the Stephen’s volume on Crime and Criminal 
Punishment. In an unstable world he found 
a certain consolation in its assured phraseol¬ 
ogy. “ And so, by the law of England as it 
now stands, the penalty of death is only laid 
down in cases of murder, treason, piracy, and 
setting fire to the King’s ships, arsenals or 
dockyards.” Such passages he would read 
out aloud, and feel that he was thereby 
purged of his Letitia Lovebody puerilities. 

But to-night, had all the Lord Chancellors 
that ever lived risen from their graves to de¬ 
claim to him the most sonorous passages from 
118 


MR. RANDAL FRERE 


the whole realm of English Law, the gloom of 
his spirit would have remained unabated. 
His eyes turned from Stephen’s Commen¬ 
taries and looked further afield. Lying on the 
floor, almost hidden by the lowest shelf, there 
was a book, a silly recent novel by some 
woman or other, sent him several weeks back 
by a friend in charge of the reviewing on a 
literary weekly. A note had been scrawled 
on the review slip: “ Don’t suppose this is any 
good; but you might glance at it.” This was 
the recognised formula for all such communi¬ 
cations. The two were old friends, but had 
quarrelled violently as a result of Randal’s 
improvident marriage with Christina; and 
Christina had disapproved of him, along with 
Randal’s other literary friends, because they 
weren’t frivolous enough. However, knowing 
the truth about the state of Randal’s finances, 
he had since made a practice of sending him 
most of the rubbish that came to his weekly 
for review, so that Randal could occasionally 
make a pound or two by disposing of it to 
those dealers who specialised in this class of 
merchandise. The rejected masterpiece lying 
on the floor was one of a collection of such 
masterpieces, already garnered in a clothes- 
basket that occupied valuable space in the 
kitchen-scullery; and it occurred to him that 

119 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


he might as well make them into a bundle and 
get them down to the shop in the morning. 
Relieved that he had at last found a remuner¬ 
ative occupation, he pulled himself to his feet, 
and on his way to the kitchen-scullery picked 
up the volume on the floor. From force of 
habit he glanced at the title, paused, and gave 
it a second glance, one that was more than 
perfunctory. He looked through the chapter 
headings and compared them with some of 
the headlines in the Morning Sun feature 
article of the day. Many of them were 
closely parallel. 

“Curious,” he murmured, “most curi¬ 
ous !” And sat down again. 

That same evening Godfrey arrived home 
an hour later than usual. He had spent most 
of the morning in thinking over the situation 
at Watling Street; a business lunch had ab¬ 
sorbed the major portion of the afternoon; 
and it was not until five o’clock that he de¬ 
termined what action to take in face of the 
Figgins attack on the good name and repu¬ 
tation of Jobb’s Hepatic Pilules. He was still 
deep in thought when he walked into the 
house. Marjorie came floating downstairs to 
meet him. 

“ You saw the paper this morning?” she 
asked, embracing him. 

120 


MR. RANDAL FRERE 


“ I did,” replied Godfrey resignedly, his 
overcoat at the moment being half on and 
half off. “ Looks bad, doesn’t it?” 

“ Oh, I don’t mean that” protested Mar¬ 
jorie, with a lively impatience of his lack of 
understanding. “ You were expecting it, 
weren’t you?” 

“ That doesn’t make it any better,” mur¬ 
mured Godfrey, deploring her sense of values. 
“ I suppose you mean that woman article?” 

“ I do,” said Marjorie fervently. “ And I’m 
quite sure that something ought to come of 
it.” 

Which was precisely what Mr. Randal 
Frere was thinking as he sprawled on the com¬ 
bination lounge-bed in his room in the Adel- 
phi, with a copy of The Revolt of Eve 
propped up against his knees. 


121 


CHAPTER VII 
CHRISTINA AT HOME 


O N the last three occasions, extending over 
a period of several months, that Randal 
had caught a glimpse of his wife she had been 
accompanied by a short fat gentleman with a 
pleasant face. The man was not a bad sort of 
creature to look at; but despite the care he 
displayed in the preservation of his person it 
was pretty obvious, at anything more than a 
casual glance, that he was getting on in years, 
and the idea of his consorting with Christina 
revolted Randal. What Christina chose to do 
with herself and her life was, of course, no 
longer any affair of his; but he found it diffi¬ 
cult to understand why, with so many eligible 
men available, she should have chosen this 
particular specimen. The first time he had 
run into them he had thought very little of the 
matter; but when, after the lapse of nearly 
nine months, he had found them still in each 
other’s company, he savagely declared to him¬ 
self that this conjunction of youth and age 
was positively disgusting. He even seriously 
considered the possibility of having a talk 
with Christina on the subject, and only put 
the project aside because he knew quite well 
what her response would be: she would tell 
him, with one of her kindly little smiles, that 

122 


CHRISTINA AT HOME 


he was a dear, dear boy, but so foolish, so 
very foolish. . . . 

Christina resided in a quite small house in 
Hampstead, within a few hundred yards of 
Church Street. Small as it was she had noth¬ 
ing whatever to do with the running of the 
house. Amy, the beloved, occupied the posi¬ 
tion of major-domo in the establishment. 
Who Amy was, where she had emerged from, 
what her opinions on life in general and on 
that household and its two chief occupants in 
particular might be, were all alike impene¬ 
trable mysteries to Christina. All she knew 
was that, some nine or ten months ago, Amy 
had been installed along with herself in this 
attractively furnished Hampstead cottage, 
and that Amy, despite the angularity of her 
person and the leanness of her features, had 
forthwith become the dearest and sweetest 
creature in the world. Time and again Chris¬ 
tina had resisted with difficulty the tempta¬ 
tion to stroke the margin of grey hair her cap 
revealed. Amy, in short, was a miraculous 
survival of the feudal age; her ideal in life 
appeared to be that of service; and it was 
now in Christina that she found an outlet for 
her excess of devotion. And Christina, who 
from her earliest youth had been accustomed 
to doing a great deal for herself, luxuriated in 

123 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

this her first experience of an utterly leisurely 
life; and the better to appreciate it she re¬ 
membered almost gratefully the discomforts 
and the anxieties she had suffered during the 
six months she had lived with Randal in a 
horrid little flat near Queen’s Park Station, 
into which the Underground trains had rum¬ 
bled everlastingly. 

Amy, of course, had some assistance in the 
conduct of the household. Regularly, on the 
first of the month, a new housemaid would 
put in an appearance, and as regularly depart 
at the end of it. It was not Christina’s fault 
that they went; she never dreamed of inter¬ 
fering with their activities; but apparently 
Amy’s one deficiency was that she didn’t know 
how to keep a housemaid. Probably her 
Spartan sense of devotion to duty was a con¬ 
stant source of annoyance; so they went: 
sometimes in tears, but more often with curses 
on their lips and nasty innuendoes as to the 
character of the lady of the house. Amy had 
better luck with the boy who came in during 
the earlier part of the morning to do the 
heavy work and odd jobs. He was a cheery- 
looking youngster with an extraordinarily 
clean face, and Christina never failed to give 
him a smile if she appeared downstairs rather 
earlier than usual. This smile, indeed, may 
124 


CHRISTINA AT HOME 


have been directly responsible for his faith¬ 
ful adherence to the Amy regime; and it is 
quite certain that never, not even at the near¬ 
est suburban music-hall, had he seen any ap¬ 
parition more enchanting than that of Chris¬ 
tina in her negligee. He worshipped her 
mutely from his lowly station, and those of 
the housemaids who had ventured to indulge 
in scandalous criticism of his divinity hardly 
escaped corporal punishment at his hands. 
Nor was this belief in his mistress’s moral 
rectitude misplaced. Christina’s morals, what¬ 
ever the world might think or say, were be¬ 
yond reproach. 

Her first meeting with the master of the 
house had taken place not long after her flight 
from Randal, when she was thoroughly enjoy¬ 
ing her newly-won freedom from domestic 
restraint. So long as there were men about to 
pay for her entertainment she had enough 
money of her own to meet the expenses of her 
board and lodging. In these days she shared 
apartments with a girl friend who ran a dress¬ 
maker’s shop near Sloane Square, and in mo¬ 
ments of extreme boredom she gave a hand 
with the sewing. Occasionally she was in¬ 
spired to design one or two frocks for her own 
use; but not often, because she was always 
prepared to maintain, even in face of her 

125 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


friend’s expert approval, that they had a 
home-made look about them. Nevertheless, 
the existence of this shop and the special fa¬ 
cilities its proprietor placed at her disposal 
provided one explanation for the extreme chic 
of her person; the other was that she had a 
genius for effect. But whereas this continued 
to operate after her marriage, the special 
facilities did not: her friend, in fact, had 
turned down Randal the moment she had set 
eyes on him, and on their marriage had ceased 
all communication. For about the first week 
of married love Christina was able to per¬ 
suade herself that her friend the dressmaker’s 
attitude was solely attributable to a particu¬ 
larly virulent form of feminine jealousy; but 
by the end of six months she had come to 
the conclusion that her friend’s insight into 
her temperament was deeper than her own. 
A tearful reconciliation ensued; the special 
facilities became immediately available, and 
the reign of spinsterly bliss was resumed. 
When next she emerged from this chaste 
environment it was on her own terms; and 
the short fat gentleman with the pleasant face 
had accepted them in good faith, but with the 
hope, and indeed the expectation, that she 
would one day see fit to modify them: all of 
which went to show that, although high 

126 


CHRISTINA AT HOME 


finance might hold no mysteries for him, 
he didn’t know the first little thing about 
Christina. 

Her information concerning Mr. Figgins, 
the man and his past, had been supplied to 
her by a friend who held a secretarial post in 
the City. She was not particularly interested 
in the details of Mr. Figgins’s directorships 
and chairmanships, of his financial genius, of 
his commercial astuteness, of the dread power 
of his name in the City, of his occasional 
adventures in philanthropy, and of the many 
other phases of his business life; it was enough 
for her to know that Mr. Figgins was a 
fabulously wealthy man. Mr. Figgins was 
not by any means a fabulously wealthy man; 
he had, in fact, only something over half a 
million pounds to his name; but the hideous 
truth as to Mr. Figgins’s exact financial 
position would hardly have caused Christina 
to change her mind; she would have been 
willing to agree that half a million pounds 
was enough to go on with. Another valu¬ 
able piece of information she received was 
that Mr. Figgins had remained a bachelor; 
and Christina’s friend was perfectly correct 
in her surmise that he had been much too 
busy all his life making money ever to waste 
time on getting married, apart from the 

127 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


question of expense. Actually Mr. Figgins, 
with all his innumerable friends and business 
acquaintances, was one of the world’s lone¬ 
liest souls, simply because he was a virtual 
outcast in the society of married men. Dur¬ 
ing these latter years, in those rare intervals 
when even money-making appeared to have 
lost its charm, he seriously considered the 
advisability of finding a lawful wife. Un¬ 
fortunately he had to face the fact that the 
only sort of woman he could hope to marry 
without scandal had no sort of interest for 
him; he had reached an age and a habit of 
mind when mere fluffiness in a woman was 
more desirable than any amount of matronly 
and moral grandeur; in fine, he couldn’t have 
for a wife the sort of girl he liked without 
becoming a laughing-stock. Moreover, he 
had enough horse-sense to know that a young 
wife might easily make his life a merry little 
hell. Altogether Mr. Figgins was in some¬ 
thing of a quandary, and to be pitied. For 
he was by no means a bad old man; it wasn’t 
his fault that he had been cursed with an 
insatiable aptitude for making money, which 
had so far absorbed his life that he was an old 
man before he even realised that he hadn’t 
begun to live. 

He had first encountered Christina in an 


128 


CHRISTINA AT HOME 


exceedingly garish West End restaurant more 
than two years before, and he had at once 
singled her out from the crowd of women 
assembled in the room. With all the high 
spirits of youth she had just that underlying 
note of seriousness which served to differen¬ 
tiate her from the vapid creatures around her; 
and poor little Mr. Figgins had succumbed, 
blindly, fatuously. His surrender was com¬ 
plete. He would have asked her to marry 
him had he dared to, and faced the social 
consequences; but he rightly guessed that 
Christina would never incur the ignominy of 
marrying a corpulent and semi-senile suitor 
like himself, and might even refuse to have 
anything more to do with him were he 
to carry his importunity to this extreme. 
He therefore pursued safer tactics. It was 
nothing new for Christina to receive hand¬ 
some presents from infatuated men; but the 
magnificence of Mr. Figgins’s never-ending 
succession of gifts was something altogether 
outside her own experience and observation. 
She wilted under their profusion. One of 
the most pressing problems of her life was to 
know what to do with them. The three rooms 
over the little shop near Sloane Square were 
already in such a state of congestion that her 
friend had bitterly remarked that it was worse 

129 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


than living in a museum; and Christina had 
only been able to effect a temporary peace by 
allowing a highly valuable Chinese vase to 
find a most unsuitable resting-place among 
the even more fantastic frocks that filled the 
shop-window. And throughout, Christina’s 
conduct had been above suspicion and beyond 
criticism. She kept Mr. Figgins at arm’s- 
length; she told him that she didn’t want 
his presents; she even threatened to return 
them, though on this one point she had never 
succeeded in translating her resolution into 
action. And still the flood had continued; 
by a curious turn of fate it partly dictated 
Christina’s decision on a proposal finally put 
up to her by the distraught Figgins. 

For over a year the constant burden of his 
remarks had been, “ What you want, my dear, 
is a home, a home!” He had never ven¬ 
tured directly to suggest that he wanted to be 
a component part of it; but he had main¬ 
tained, whenever a convenient opportunity 
presented itself in their conversation, that it 
distressed him to think of her existing in that 
cubby-hole of a place near Sloane Square; 
whereupon Christina would tell him, mimick¬ 
ing the tone of his voice, that she wasn’t at 
all sure that she wanted a home , and change 
the subject. But Mr. Figgins was not to be 
130 


CHRISTINA AT HOME 


easily put off. He went on telling her that 
what she wanted was a home , until, through 
weight of repetition, she was half in agree¬ 
ment with him. She had to admit that ex¬ 
istence in three small rooms over a dress¬ 
maker’s shop was sometimes a little wearing 
to the nerves; and another crisis was impend¬ 
ing over her friend’s expressed desire to place 
at the back of the shop-window a delicate 
piece of tapestry Mr. Figgins had bought her 
as a becoming decoration for the wall over the 
head of her bed. It was at this climacteric 
moment that Mr. Figgins played his master¬ 
stroke. He suggested that nothing would give 
him greater pleasure than to install Christina 
in a little house of her own where she could 
display her private possessions to her heart’s 
content; he added, with an affecting lugu¬ 
briousness, that in considering this proposal 
she could wash him right out of the picture. 

At any other time nothing might have come 
of this offer; but when she arrived back at the 
shop that evening she found to her amaze¬ 
ment that her piece of tapestry had actually 
been installed at the back of the window, and 
she accepted the challenge for what it was — 
a declaration of war. There followed a night 
of mutual recrimination, during which her 
friend made several unkind references to the 

131 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

hard lot of those people in the world who had 
to work for a living. Long before morning 
arrived Christina’s mind was made up, and 
before the day was out Mr. Figgins had 
waved the magic wand of his financial re¬ 
sources. The achievement may have cost him 
a small fortune, but within three days he had 
settled Christina in the cottage at Hamp¬ 
stead, with Amy as her personal attendant. 

The appearance of Amy had very nearly 
caused an immediate rupture. Christina in¬ 
stantly surmised that she was to play the part 
of a watch-dog, and had flared up into such a 
pretty state of indignation that the fluttering 
of Mr. Figgins’s heart very nearly brought on 
one of his periodic apoplectic fits. Fortu¬ 
nately for him peace very quickly ensued. It 
was specifically agreed that Christina should 
have entire liberty of action, and that his 
right of admission to the house should be 
completely dependent on her will. Having 
obtained this definite ruling, Christina ac¬ 
quiesced in his suggestion that one room in 
the house should be set aside for his sole occu¬ 
pation, whenever he chose to avail himself of 
the privilege; and this same evening it was 
settled that, so far as Hampstead was con¬ 
cerned and for the purpose of introduction to 
any friends he might safely bring to the 
132 


CHRISTINA AT HOME 


house, she should forthwith assume the status 
of his niece. For nearly a year now Christina 
had existed under her new title; the sight of 
“ Miss Christina Figgins ” on an envelope no 
longer gave her a turn; and the days she 
had spent in those three little rooms, where 
the smell of a hot iron everlastingly lingered, 
already seemed infinitely remote. 

This evening Mr. Figgins was dining with 
her at home — a highly valued privilege she 
only occasionally vouchsafed. Christina was 
convinced in her own mind that the system 
would break down soon or late; and because 
she was determined never to resign herself to 
him, she was wisely sparing of the opportuni¬ 
ties she gave him for sharing the delights of 
the cottage. She was not ungrateful for bene¬ 
fits received. Whenever Mr. Figgins was en¬ 
gaged in some big financial deal she never 
failed to give him what comfort she could, 
within the set limits of their intercourse. 
Christina, in fact, was the only person in the 
world in whom he could confide his business 
worries. She would listen patiently to his 
recital of the tremendous sums involved, with¬ 
out much understanding of the issues at 
stake; but she grasped enough to perceive 
that the career of a financial overlord was 
subject to all those petty annoyances and 

133 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

anxieties that afflict less splendid adventurers. 
In times of crisis he would sit stolidly and 
stare into the fire with miserable eyes for 
minutes on end, and she would feel quite an 
affection for him. She found it hard to 
realise that this fat, pleasant-looking little 
man, with his several chins and his large white 
hands, could, if he chose, inspire terror into a 
whole industrial system; and if she rather 
over-estimated his capabilities in this direc¬ 
tion, it was not because he ever attempted to 
show off in her presence: such exhibitions he 
reserved for lesser creatures — a Mr. Godfrey 
Jobb, a Bank Manager, the Managing Direc¬ 
tor of a pip-squeak organisation he was re¬ 
solved to crush out of existence, or the staff 
of his arid mansion, W. i. 

Christina had heard all about the Big Pill 
Push from its earliest inception and was quite 
interested in the project, because it was some¬ 
thing she understood. A pill was a pill, 
whereas talk about first mortgage debenture 
interests never took on a concrete significance 
in her mind. Figgins had told her about his 
first visit to Mr. Jobb, and she had asked 
many questions about this commercial enemy. 
She felt rather sorry for poor Mr. Jobb. He 
sounded as if he were quite a nice man, and 
it seemed hard lines that he should have to 


134 


CHRISTINA AT HOME 


be put out of business for the sake of the 
aggrandisement of the Chemical Corporation 
of America. Christina had no ideas at all on 
the subject of commercial morality, but she 
couldn’t acquit Figgins of a certain ruthless¬ 
ness in the conduct of these particular nego¬ 
tiations, although she dimly suspected that 
the whole of his business career had been one 
long succession of highly ruthless and highly 
successful dealings with men and money. 
When she had suggested that pills were com¬ 
mercial phenomena beneath his consideration, 
he had gravely informed her that there was 
money in pills; and he had pronounced this 
dictum with such fervency that she at last 
perceived what it was to be a high priest of 
finance. 

Amy, as usual, showed him into the room. 
He was wearing a dinner jacket that seemed 
to enhance the extreme podginess of his 
figure. 

“ Evening, Christina,” he said; and meticu¬ 
lously deposited a kiss on the crown of her 
head. This was the utmost limit she allowed 
him in the way of embrace. He sat down on 
the other side of the fire and, with a sigh 
of contentment, appraised her form and her 
gown. 

He was not oblivious of the fact that 

135 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

the gown had cost him twenty-five guineas. 

“ Tired, Figgy ? ” she asked him, curling 
herself into one corner of the lounge. 

“ Not when I see you, my dear.” Mr. 
Figgins chuckled to himself: this was the one 
little joke of his life for which he claimed the 
sole honours of invention. 

“ Had a good day ? ” 

“ A great day.” 

This was the recognised formula for the 
opening of all their conversations in the cot¬ 
tage at Hampstead. The only possible vari¬ 
ation occurred in his second response. His 
days were either great or good, or bad or not 
so bad. Christina was always glad to hear 
that he had had a great day; it meant that 
he would be even more amenable than usual, 
and that she would be able to get him out of 
the house at a reasonable hour. 

“ Yes, a great day,” said Mr. Figgins, pre¬ 
paring to offer her a cigarette, which she 
waved aside in anticipation: she much pre¬ 
ferred that he should stay where he was. 

“ I’m glad,” murmured Christina. “ Dear 
old Figgy ! ” This was the utmost limit she 
allowed herself in the way of a term of en¬ 
dearment. 

“ Pills?” 

“ Yes,” said Mr. Figgins, with an emphasis 


136 


CHRISTINA AT HOME 


that seemed to shake his abdomen. “ Pills! 
You’ve seen the paper?” 

“ I have,” said Christina, “ and I thought 
it was too dreadful. . . . No, not really,” she 
added quickly, seeing by his look that she 
had hurt him. “ I’m sure the public will 
love it.” 

“ Then look at this,” said Mr. Figgins, 
brightening up immediately, and handing her 
a copy of an evening paper. Having indi¬ 
cated with a large white hand what she was 
to look at, quietly and obediently, like a little 
dog, he resumed his seat on the other side 
of the fireplace. 

“ If that doesn’t fetch the public,” mur¬ 
mured Mr. Figgins, as he relapsed into his 
chair, “ nothing ever will.” He gazed in a 
state of dreamy contentment at the top of 
Christina’s bent head. 

“ I’ve always said,” he continued, “ that 
there’s money in pills.” And his eyes closed 
over the dual vision of earthly bliss that was 
unfolded to him. 

The second in the series of “ The Little 
Liver Ills of the Great,” as previously an¬ 
nounced, concerned the passionate career of 
George Gordon, the sixth Lord Byron, vari¬ 
ously referred to as the Pilgrim of Eternity, 
the Prince of Voluptuaries, and the volcanic 

137 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

son of a vixenish mother. The poet’s features 
were illustrated under two aspects. One 
portrait presented a pale and lovely face, 
dreaming ethereally on things eternal, with 
a guardian halo of the true and tender women 
of his acquaintance; the other, a saturnine 
and embittered countenance, gazing with a 
gloomy indifference upon the slaughtered hap¬ 
piness of his wife, mother and sister, and the 
Countess Guiccioli. It was then briefly ex¬ 
plained that liver trouble accounted for, if it 
did not entirely excuse, that disastrous spirit 
of revolt which was his lifelong characteristic. 
This line of argument led up to the grand 
conclusion that the nation’s poetic treasures 
would have been richer, and the tongue of 
scandal poorer, could the heaven-sent libera¬ 
tor of the Greek peoples have availed himself 
of Aunt Mary’s Liver Pills, the all-in cure for 
every infirmity of the liver. This historical 
survey for the masses concluded with the ex¬ 
hortation — “ Double the price — ten times 
the benefit!” 

Said Christina: “ I love that bit about 
Aunt Mary from the West Country, and the 
secluded village, and Nature’s secrets. What 
are they made of, really?” 

Mr. Figgins blanched, gazed fearfully 
round the room, and mutely besought her to 

138 


CHRISTINA AT HOME 


relieve him of so painful a disclosure; but 
Christina remained adamant, with the query 
still on her lips. 

“ Only,” muttered Mr. Figgins, hardly 
above a whisper, and gripping both arms of 
his chair to steady his nerve, “ only-” 

“ Dinner is served, madam,” said Amy at 
the door. 

Mr. Figgins could not have risen from his 
seat with greater alacrity had the summons 
come direct from heaven. 

“Tell you another time!” he announced 
gaily, but not a little astounded to find that 
he was not quite so shameless as he thought 
he was. “ Tell you another time, my dear,” 
he repeated, with the light-hearted abandon 
of the confirmed liar. 

It was not until after dinner, when the 
pampered Figgins again lay back in his chair, 
contentedly observing her from the near end 
of his cigar, that Christina resumed her read¬ 
ing of the evening paper. This dull and ex¬ 
ceedingly domestic procedure was also a part 
of the recognised routine. To see the beau¬ 
teous Christina, and to sit with her, within 
the four walls of this room which, along with 
herself, was his own creation, as nearly as 
possible realised for Mr. Figgins his ecstatic 
conception of married bliss; whereas Chris- 

139 



A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

tina was reduced to reading the trivialities in 
the gossip columns and the woman’s page. 
About every quarter of an hour she would 
read an extract aloud, to make sure that he 
was still awake. Whenever he dropped off to 
sleep during these sittings she found it a most 
difficult matter to arouse him, and he invari¬ 
ably woke up in such a bad temper that it 
required all her tact to persuade him to leave 
the house quietly. 

“ Figgy?” 

“ Yes, my dear?” Mr. Figgins’s plump and 
pasty features broke into a smile; he knew 
from her voice that she had found something 
really interesting to tell him. 

“ Did you know,” asked Christina, “ that 
your Mr. Jobb had a literary wife?” 

“ I should never have dreamed of such a 
thing,” said Mr. Figgins, with unusual 
loquacity at this hour of the night. “ I 
should have thought the poor fellow had 
enough to put up with already.” 

“ Then perhaps this is a different Mr. 
Jobb,” said Christina, with her eyes on the 
paper. “ Listen to this: ‘ Mrs. Godfrey Jobb, 
whose first novel, The Revolt of Eve , is being 
widely discussed in well-informed literary 
circles, has received remarkable confirmation 
of her somewhat advanced theories by the 
140 


CHRISTINA AT HOME 


recent discoveries of the world-famous Italian 
explorer, Professor Enrico Conti. Further 
details concerning the life of the inhabitants 
of this distant Pacific isle — where, appar¬ 
ently, women rule with enormously beneficial 
results to the community as a whole — are 
awaited by her many thousands of readers 
with the greatest possible interest. Mean¬ 
while, the highly gifted authoress, whose hus¬ 
band played a prominent part in City life 
until he found it possible to retire with a con¬ 
siderable fortune to a charming little place in 
the country, devotes what time she can spare 
from her literary pursuits to the cultivation of 
her fascinating rock garden. As charming as 
she is talented, and with youth on her side, 
Mrs. Godfrey Jobb has already won for her¬ 
self a premier position in the ranks of our 
lady novelists.’ Well, what do you think of 
that?” concluded Christina. 

“ Never heard of the book, nor the 
woman,” said Mr. Figgins, frowning. “ What 
was that bit about retiring to the country with 
a considerable fortune?” 

“ Don’t worry,” said Christina. “ It can’t 
be your Mr. Jobb. And if it were, these 
Press agents make dreadful mistakes at times. 
I knew one of them once.” She might have 
added that she had married him and was still 


141 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

his wife; but this was one of those little 
secrets she thought it wiser to keep to herself. 
“ Time to go home, dear Figgy,” she con¬ 
cluded, and pressed the bell. 

Resignedly and mournfully Mr. Figgins 
rose from his seat. He sighed throughout the 
length and breadth of his dumpy body. She 
never called him “ dear Figgy ” or “ dear old 
Figgy ” more than twice in one evening, and 
no sweeter music ever entered his soul. She 
was hard, was his beautiful Christina; and 
harder still to send him coldly forth into the 
chill night air. But it was ever thus and, so 
far as he could see, ever would be. He 
wished that he had been ten, twenty years 
younger; she might then have been something 
more than kind to him. The more money he 
acquired the older he got; and this was just 
about all there was to life as he knew it: 
despairing and obvious facts only thrust upon 
his notice in such moments as these. 

“ Good-night, Figgy,” said Christina, a 
trifle peremptorily. She held her hands over 
the fire, out of harm’s way, and gave him 
one of her exasperatingly kind little smiles; it 
was also intended to be, as he well knew, her 
final valedictory signal, which she had trained 
him to accept without demur. He bowed 
and lightly touched her hair with his lips. 
142 


CHRISTINA AT HOME 


Christina rose from her seat as Amy appeared 
at the door. 

“ Taxi’s waiting, sir,” said Amy, standing 
to one side and so leaving him no option but 
to depart forthwith. There were times when 
he felt that he had made a mistake in intro¬ 
ducing to this enchanted cottage such a re¬ 
doubtable handmaiden. 

When the door had closed on him it was 
Christina’s turn to sigh. Even though he had 
been in one of his most tractable moods the 
evening had been rather a strain. She heard 
Amy drawing the bolts of the front door, and 
it was not much more than ten o’clock. Em¬ 
phatically she could never have stood the life 
had every evening proceeded on this plan. 
Her eyes fell on the discarded evening paper, 
and although she wearily believed that she had 
read every word in it she picked it up again. 
This Mrs. Godfrey Jobb, with her wonderful 
book and her fascinating rock garden, was a 
lucky woman; she at least was firmly estab¬ 
lished on the earth; whereas she, Christina, 
might yet find herself back in those three 
little rooms over the dressmaker’s shop near 
Sloane Square. Figgins had never been such 
a fool as to think of settling any money on 
her, and she had never suggested that he 
should. She had refrained, not for reasons 

143 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


of policy, but because she didn’t want his 
money; in fact, she didn’t know what she did 
want; and much the same thing applied to 
most of the women she had ever met. She 
found herself staring at one particular phrase 
in the Mrs. Godfrey Jobb paragraph: “as 
charming as she is talented, and with youth 
on her side...From what she remembered 
of his work this sounded very much like 
Randal; and she was so bored that she even 
began to wonder how he was getting on. It 
was the first time for months that she had 
given her late husband a moment’s serious 
thought. 


144 


CHAPTER VIII 


MRS. GODFREY JOBB 

HpHE pale-faced girl behind the counter, 
who never wasted words or punctuation 
marks, had left a message on his table which 
read: “ Would you please catch the early 
train down because an unexpected visitor has 
arrived and dinner must not be late and you 
have to change.” 

Godfrey read through the message half a 
dozen times, and each time liked it less. 
There was nothing he detested more than 
having to rush to catch the early train 
when he couldn’t be quite sure of catching 
it; he didn’t approve of unexpected visitors 
because he had never yet come across an 
unexpected visitor who was really welcome: 
in his experience the uninvited guest invari¬ 
ably turned up without an invitation because 
no invitation would ever have been forth¬ 
coming; and he objected to the apparently 
innocuous intimation that dinner was not to 
be late. Coming from Marjorie this was the 
most ominous of warnings. Days sometimes 
elapsed before he heard the last of his remiss¬ 
ness in keeping one of her special dinners 
waiting. Finally, he actively disliked the 
thought of having to change merely because 
an unwanted guest had chosen to put in an 

145 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

appearance. Godfrey, in fact, was in a 
thoroughly bad temper. 

Three days had elapsed since the launching 
of Aunt Mary’s Liver Pills on the market; 
and although it was much too early yet to 
estimate the effects of the campaign, the re¬ 
ports that Godfrey had received from his 
three travellers were sufficiently disquieting. 
The organisation that Figgins had called into 
being had sent forth its representatives to 
every corner of the land; the smallest shops 
in the most obscure hamlets had heard 
of Aunt Mary’s Liver Pills, and probably 
stocked them, on extraordinarily favourable 
terms. Jobb’s Hepatic Pilules remained on 
their shelves; but orders for more were not 
forthcoming at the moment: the trade — that 
great body of shopkeepers to whose whims 
and dictates every manufacturer bows — 
were waiting on the decision of the public. 
Meanwhile, for the sake of the extra profits 
involved, they advocated the superior claims 
of Aunt Mary’s West Country remedy. 

Godfrey’s reply to the Figgins attack on 
the good name and reputation of his pills 
reached neither Napoleonic heights nor By- 
ronic extremes. He did not purchase huge 
spaces in the advertising columns of the news¬ 
papers and fill them with illustrated histori- 


146 


MRS . GODFREY JOBB 


cal narratives; he embarked on no appeal to 
the sentiment or the emotion of his readers, 
nor did he attempt to purge them with pity 
and terror. Certainly he doubled his adver¬ 
tising appropriation, but he persevered with 
his small spaces; and instead of telling his 
public once a week that Jobb’s Hepatic Pilules 
were good for the liver and cost one and 
threepence a box, he told them precisely the 
same thing, in the same language, twice a 
week. In arriving at this decision Godfrey 
was guided neither by high considerations of 
policy nor by any intuitive insight into the 
minds of the public. Having given the mat¬ 
ter a great deal of thought and come to the 
conclusion that there was nothing he could 
usefully say about his pills beyond the fact 
that they were good for the liver, he was re¬ 
solved to say this and nothing more, and to 
go on saying it. Godfrey would willingly 
have agreed that this wasn’t brilliant adver¬ 
tising; that it was dull and unimaginative 
both in conception and execution; that it was 
nothing in the nature of a counterblast to the 
forces ranged against him. But romantic 
flights of the imagination in the advertising 
columns of the newspapers cost a great deal 
of money and were quite beyond his means. 
Small as his business was, judged solely on 

147 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

turnover, he had, in the past, been compelled 
to spend seven or eight thousand pounds a 
year on keeping the inhabitants of the British 
Isles informed of the fact that Jobb’s Hepatic 
Pilules were good for the liver and cost one 
and threepence a box; he had now to face an 
expenditure of fifteen thousand pounds to 
sustain this comparatively trivial measure of 
defence. Altogether the outlook was not en¬ 
livening, either on the business or on the 
domestic side. He would have forthwith to 
institute certain domestic economies; and 
Marjorie, who had frequently indicated to 
what excellent uses they might have put the 
rejected twenty thousand pounds, would not 
be consoled to know that the money saved 
was being spent on the wretched pill business. 

Godfrey did not buy a copy of his usual 
evening paper until he reached the station; 
he wouldn't have bought one at all had Mar¬ 
jorie not been a victim of the evening paper 
habit. All newspapers were becoming hate¬ 
ful to him; he couldn’t take up any of them 
without expecting to come across one of Fig- 
gins’s advertisements, and every advertise¬ 
ment he saw accentuated the fearfulness of 
his position. Byron had made his first ap¬ 
pearance that morning and would doubtless 
be in all the evening papers. He was, and 
148 


MRS. GODFREY JOBB 


Godfrey very quickly turned to another page; 
he was already sick of the sight of Byron in 
this or in any other environment. There 
was no news of absorbing interest and his 
eyes glanced down the gossip columns, paus¬ 
ing at a paragraph headed “ A New Lady 
Novelist.” 

“ Mrs. Godfrey Jobb,” he read, “ whose 
first novel, The Revolt of Eve, is being widely 
discussed in well-informed literary circles .. .” 
Godfrey broke off to pass some blasphemous 
comment under his breath “ .. . . whose hus¬ 
band played a prominent part in City life 
until he found it possible to retire with a con¬ 
siderable fortune to a charming little place in 
the country. ...” A look of bewilderment 
crept into Godfrey’s eyes; he put down the 
paper; took it up again; re-examined the 
parenthetical clause from every possible angle 
with an ever-deepening frown; and finally 
turned to one side and examined the reflec¬ 
tion of his face in the window-pane as if 
he were a little incredulous about his own 
identity. 

The mystery was still unsolved by the time 
he reached home. No assistance was forth¬ 
coming from Marjorie, who appeared immedi¬ 
ately he set foot inside the front door. 

“ And I asked you to be early!” 


149 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

Godfrey noticed that she was wearing a 
dinner-gown which she had given him to 
understand was being held in reserve for their 
next important function in town. He gloom¬ 
ily inspected it. 

“Anything the matter with it — or me?” 
asked Marjorie-, with a mixture of petulance 
and defiance. 

“ Nothing at all,” said Godfrey, removing 
his gloves so leisurely that the hour for 
dinner might have been some days distant. 
“ Nothing at all. I was only wondering why 

Marjorie looked a trifle abashed. She came 
a little closer to him and held up her mouth 
for a kiss. Godfrey perfunctorily complied 
with the request: he knew these tactics of 
old. 

“ Oh, well,” explained Marjorie, “ I just 
thought I’d like to wear it this evening. You 
see, we’ve rather an important visitor.” 

“Not our old friend Figgins!” suggested 
Godfrey with an amiable ferocity. 

“ No,” said Marjorie abruptly, resenting 
this oblique reference to the world of pills. 
“ A Mr. Randal Frere.” 

“ Don’t know him.” He was about to 
add that he didn’t want to, but refrained in 
time. “ Who is he?” 

“ My Press agent,” announced Marjorie, 


150 


MRS. GODFREY JOBB 


pretending to smooth out an invisible crease 
in her gown. 

“ Your what!” Godfrey held his breath. 
“ If that’s the fellow who’s responsible for 
that paragraph about me in the paper 
to-night-” 

“ About you, dear?” She allowed three 
seconds for the rebuke to sink in, and then 
added with the greatest consideration: 

“ The part that does concern you I’ll ex¬ 
plain later. Now please hurry up and get 
changed.” 

“ You’re beyond belief,” said Godfrey, 
allowing himself to be dragged upstairs. “ I 
come home and am blandly informed that a 
fellow I’ve never heard of has appointed him¬ 
self your Press agent and taken up his resi¬ 
dence in my house-” 

“ At my invitation,” interposed Marjorie, 
now a little breathless after the exertion of 
getting him to the top of the stairs. “ And 
it shows,” she added, giving him a final push 
into his dressing-room, “ that I was right in 
what I said about that article in the Morning 
Sun” 

“ A great deal appears to have come of it,” 
gruffly commented the comparatively obscure 
husband of Mrs. Godfrey Jobb. “ Mr. Ran¬ 
dal Frere, for instance.” 


151 




A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

“ Mr. Frere had read my book/’ said Mar¬ 
jorie with an impatient brevity, “ saw the 
article, realised the possibilities in it, drew up 
the paragraph on his own responsibility, got 
it inserted, and came down here to offer me 
his professional services. I asked him to stay 
on so that he could collect some material.” 

“ About rock gardens?” asked Godfrey, 
savagely flinging open his wardrobe door. 

a About me,” corrected Mrs. Godfrey Jobb, 
with a hint in her voice that she was now a 
person of some importance. Her husband 
allowed the remark to pass without any 
comment. 

“ Altogether a very remarkable young 
man,” he murmured. “ So thoughtful of him 
to bring his luggage along.” 

“ He did not,” said Marjorie-Mrs. Godfrey 
Jobb, bracing herself to meet a difficult situ¬ 
ation. “ I had to lend him some of your 
things. Every minute's valuable at this stage, 
and I didn’t want him to waste time in going 
up to town for them.” 

Godfrey walked round his room on a short 
tour of inspection, and started to pull out his 
drawers. 

“ Where are those new silk pyjamas you 
bought me for my birthday?” he demanded 
loudly. 





MRS . GODFREY JOBB 


“ Don’t shout, Godfrey,” she urged him. 
“ He might hear you!” 

“ And that new safety-razor of mine,” he 
went on, his hands diving into one drawer 
after another. “ Has he got that too?” 

Marjorie nodded. 

“ Then, thank God!” he ejaculated. “ For 
if he’s not too careful he’ll easily succeed in 
cutting his throat with it. And now, what 
next?” 

But Marjorie, momentarily, was bereft of 
the power of speech; never before had she 
seen Godfrey worked up to such a pitch; she 
hardly recognised her own husband. Incredi¬ 
ble that this was the docile creature she had 
lived with for more years than she cared to 
remember! 

“ You said that he was a young man?” 

“ I didn’t say so,” replied Marjorie, re¬ 
lieved that he had resigned a line of attack 
for which she had little or no defence. “ You 
suggested it.” 

“ And you didn’t correct me.” 

“ His age has nothing whatever to do with 
his work.” 

“ But I’m willing to guarantee,” growled 
Godfrey, “ that you wouldn’t have presented 
him with my brand new silk pyjamas if he’d 
looked the sort of person who would feel more 

153 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

at home in a nightshirt. Is he married?” 

“ How should I know?” 

“ Because it’s the first question a woman 
asks herself of any man. Finally ” — and at 
this point he significantly searched his pockets 
and produced threepence in coppers, which 
he placed in a conspicuous position on the 
dressing-table — “ who is going to pay this 
man for his services?” 

“ I am, of course,” said Marjorie. “ That 
is, ultimately, when I get my money for the 
book.” 

“ Meanwhile-” 

“ Meanwhile,” concluded Marjorie, “ the 
dinner’s getting spoiled,” and walked out of 
the room. 

At dinner that evening Godfrey had to 
admit that Marjorie excelled herself. He 
had never before so thoroughly appreciated 
her skill as a hostess. She was charming to 
him, and no less charming, but in a different 
way, to Mr. Randal Frere. The phrase in 
the paragraph about her being as charming as 
she was talented took on quite a new meaning 
for him. He had never been blind to the 
fact that she was charming and had a certain 
amount of talent—though in what direction 
he had never paused to consider. It was just 
a fact, like any other of the accepted facts of 

154 




MRS. GODFREY JOBB 


life; and now he was suddenly called upon to 
witness the living expression of it. Godfrey 
felt somewhat disconcerted, and not a little 
jealous of this Mr. Randal Frere. At first 
glance he had found it quite impossible to 
acquire a proper aversion for the man. In 
outward appearance he was like thousands of 
other young men with clean-shaven faces and 
carefully brushed hair; he might have taken 
his stand behind any bank counter and looked 
as if he had never in his life touched anything 
more distasteful than a Treasury note. His 
manner was that of a man who commendably 
exerted himself to please an accomplished 
hostess, while maintaining a proper deference 
for the more solid qualities of his host. But 
Godfrey was still far from feeling happy 
about the situation, when Marjorie, after giv¬ 
ing much attention to Randal’s anecdotes con¬ 
cerning those literary and social celebrities 
with whom he appeared to be acquainted, in¬ 
sisted that the two men should retire to the 
study; and Godfrey, having no choice in the 
matter, led the way. 

“ Thank you, sir,” said Randal, accepting 
without demur the most comfortable chair in 
the room and one of Godfrey’s best cigars. 
“ I’m most awfully sorry to descend on you in 
this fashion. But Mrs. Jobb-” 


155 



A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

“ That’s quite all right. I understand,” 
broke in Godfrey. “ Whisky-and-soda?” 

“ Thanks.” 

Godfrey inwardly cursed himself. There 
were at least half a dozen very pertinent ques¬ 
tions he wanted to address to this self-assured 
young man; and the longer he deferred put¬ 
ting them the less chance there was of his 
ever summoning up enough courage to do 
so. And here he was, dispensing hospitality 
with a lavish hand and with the utmost 
geniality. ... He flung himself into a chair 
by the fire. 

“ Living in town?” 

“ Oh, yes,” replied Randal. “ In the 
Adelphi. Just a couple of rooms, you know.” 
In answering all such questions he allowed 
the kitchen-scullery to assume the status of a 
room. 

“ Married?” 

Randal hesitated a fraction of a second be¬ 
fore replying, and Godfrey noted the pause. 

“ No,” said Randal; and added, rather too 
quickly: 

“ Charming little place you’ve got down 
here.” 

“ As you’ve remarked elsewhere,” observed 
Godfrey. “ And now perhaps you’ll tell me 
how I come to find myself on the retired list, 

156 



MRS. GODFREY JOBB 


with a considerable fortune, and the rest of 
it.” 

“ Oh, that’s easily explained,” said Randal, 
quite failing to realise that this was intended 
for a piece of brutal plain speaking. “ Truth 
to tell, I had no means of finding out quickly 
what you were or anything about you, beyond 
the fact that you lived in the country; and I 
still don’t know.” 

“ Pills!” growled Godfrey. “ Jobb’s He¬ 
patic Pilules! Ever heard of them?” 

“Good lord!” murmured Randal. “I 
always thought of that particular Jobb as 


“ Out with it—if it’s not too squalid. A 
frowsy little man living up a back street?” 

“ Hardly that,” protested Randal, uneasily 
stroking his chin. “But, you know, it is a 
little difficult for a complete outsider to realise 
the enormous possibilities in the sale of boxes 
of pills.” 

“ No doubt,” said Godfrey. “ However, 
I’ve yet to retire with a considerable fortune, 
although it rather looks as if I may have to 
retire without one. Meanwhile, if you find it 
necessary to refer to me at all, you may de¬ 
scribe me as that eminent pill manufacturer.” 

“ Um,” murmured Randal, a little taken 
aback at the note of bitterness in his host’s 


157 



A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


voice. “ Mrs. Godfrey Jobb, the wife of the 
eminent pill manufacturer. . . . No, that 
would never do, and I don’t think your wife 
would like it either.” 

“ She wouldn’t,” grimly responded God¬ 
frey. “ That’s why I suggested it.” 

He dimly perceived that this was an his¬ 
toric moment in his married life. It was the 
first genuinely ill-tempered remark he had 
ever made concerning Marjorie to a third 
party. 

In retrospect, Mr. Randal Frere, as he sat 
on the edge of his bed, was rapidly inclining 
to the opinion that he had just embarked on 
one of the most surprising episodes of his 
career. Months had elapsed since he had last 
experienced the domestic amenities that now 
surrounded him. He turned a critical eye on 
the superlative silk pyjamas elegantly laid out 
on the equally resplendent eider-down, and 
wondered what Mrs. Cushion would have 
thought of them. With all her defects Mrs. 
Cushion was the one woman in the world 
who, since Christina’s departure, had dis¬ 
played the least interest in the practical needs 
of his bachelor existence; and Mrs. Cushion 
had grown tired of telling him that he hadn’t 
a single pair of pyjamas that wasn’t past 
158 


MRS. GODFREY JOBB 


praying for; and if she had gone on washing 
them it was only because, as she herself 
stated, a Christian gentleman must have some 
sort of covering for his limbs at night. Ran¬ 
dal began to feel that he had been missing 
something in life, and forthwith resolved that, 
immediately on his return to town, he would 
invest in a piece of apparel not less glorious. 
After all, whatever might be the present state 
of his finances, it seemed more than likely 
that he would be able to afford such luxuries 
for the future. Anything might happen after 
this auspicious start; he appeared to have 
picked up what he had always wanted—a per¬ 
manency. The nearest he had ever come to it 
before was during his visit to the tin-kettle 
manufacturer in the Midlands; and with 
Marjorie’s charmingly modulated “ Good¬ 
night, Mr. Frere,” still ringing in his ears, he 
shuddered anew at the recollection of that 
man’s incredibly provincial and pervasive 
wife. 

The two women hardly seemed to belong to 
the same order of creation; Marjorie, in fact 
—he couldn’t think of her as Mrs. Godfrey 
Jobb—was utterly different from any of the 
women with whom he was able to claim a 
superficial acquaintance; she confounded all 
his preconceptions of the character and the 

159 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


personality of the authoress of The Revolt of 
Eve. He had expected to find a foolish frump 
of a woman, suffering from a sexual deficiency 
and a grudge against the male species; 
whereas she had turned out to be an average 
female creature, with rather more than the 
average charm. The book, of course, was 
drivel; and although it was difficult enough 
to understand how she came to write this par¬ 
ticular sort of drivel, why she wrote the book 
at all was a still deeper mystery. He could 
only assume that she had taken a course of 
“ How to write a novel in twelve lessons,” the 
first of these advising the prospective author 
to purchase a typewriter and to find an 
idea. She had found the idea—the universal 
insurrection of women—and the rest had 
miraculously followed. He realised that this 
explanation was not wholly satisfactory. 
Despite the exceeding pleasantness of her 
home she might, beneath the surface, be 
afflicted with a sense of frustration of the 
human spirit, or some such modern mental 
disease; she might not even know what actu¬ 
ally was the matter with her. Anyway, he 
would learn more about it when they were 
better acquainted—a prospect he envisaged 
with more satisfaction than he felt was good 
for him. He didn’t want any personal corn- 
160 


MRS. GODFREY JOBB 


plications to interfere with this his first big 
piece of work. 

Randal, in fact, for the last year or two, 
had allowed no such complications to enter 
his life; he couldn’t afford them; it was all he 
could do to find enough money to support him¬ 
self in a state of external decency. Christina, 
during her short reign over his heart, had 
played such havoc with his peace of mind that 
he did not propose to risk any disturbance of 
its subsequent serenity; what he desired was 
a continuing period of spiritual tranquillity. 
Opportunities in plenty had come his way of 
indulging in vulgar liaisons with the common 
crowd of women; and he had refrained, not 
for reasons of finance, but from a natural 
fastidiousness. With all her faults Christina 
herself had set him a standard in these mat¬ 
ters, and he had no intention of falling away 
from it. The other women in that polite little 
world with which he contrived to maintain a 
precarious connection were altogether beyond 
his means, however much he might have de¬ 
sired them. One false step, and he would be 
revealed for what he was—a hanger-on, an 
impecunious dependent. The faithful if un¬ 
reliable Mrs. Cushion was the only living 
soul who knew the truth about the elegant 
Mr. Randal Frere. Christina might guess, 

161 



A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


but she could have no certain knowledge of 
his present position. . . . 

Randal broke off these reflections and took 
a walk round the room. He was surprised to 
find that his thoughts were returning to 
Christina with an embarrassing frequency, 
although he had long since flattered himself 
that he had rid his mind of her influence. Per¬ 
haps Marjorie herself was responsible for this 
partial resurgence. He had come down to 
interview her on a purely business matter; 
the visit itself was a mad project that he 
would never have undertaken had he thought 
twice about it. But she had liked the look 
of him, greeted him as a friend and a deliv¬ 
erer, accepted the offer of his services—with¬ 
out a very clear understanding of what they 
inferred—and thrown open the house to him; 
and there was a subtle feminine influence at 
work over the whole of that house, and over 
himself as a member of it. By contrast with 
his usual manner of life he felt that he was 
once more under a woman’s care; and so it 
was that the shadow of Christina, after this 
long interval of time, again crossed his path. 
Memories of the delightful intimacies of that 
brief past rose to confront him. . . . 

Randal again broke off the train of these 
recollections, and began vigorously to prepare 

162 


MRS. GODFREY JOBB 


for bed. This was not the moment for senti¬ 
mental reminiscence, with a thousand very 
practical problems demanding immediate so¬ 
lution. He caught a glimpse of himself in 
the wardrobe mirror. The silk pyjamas he 
was wearing might be handsome enough for 
any company; but still the fact remained that 
his total cash resources amounted to half a 
crown and a few coppers—not even enough to 
get him back to the Adelphi, where, as he 
moodily reflected, he could at least starve to 
death in privacy. He noted, in parenthesis, 
that he had temporarily overlooked his reso¬ 
lution, in any such contingency, to end every¬ 
thing on the steps of the Embankment: for 
which defection he was inclined to blame 
either the influence of Christina or the less 
wraith-like appearance of the charming Mrs. 
Godfrey Jobb. He was unable to decide in 
his own mind which of these two women was 
responsible for his changed outlook on life; 
but even this particular problem seemed un¬ 
important when he remembered that he had 
promised to make one of them famous in a 
fortnight. . . . The one way of escape from 
all these problems was sleep, and Randal 
wisely seized it, and slept; and dreamed that 
he was being slowly submerged by innumer¬ 
able battalions of shining saucepans. 


163 


CHAPTER IX 


MRS. CUSHION’S ENCOUNTER 

Tj'OR the past three weeks Mrs. Cushion had 
^ been unfailing in the regularity of her 
daily visits to the flat in Duke Street, despite 
the fact that Mr. Randal Frere was not in 
town. Had he not been away she would cer¬ 
tainly have found a very good excuse for tak¬ 
ing a day off two or three times a week, and 
this unprecedented record of devotion to duty 
was to be ascribed to a variety of motives. 
Mrs. Cushion was curious, she was suspicious, 
and she was not a little alarmed. Never once 
in the two and a half years that she had looked 
after Mr. Randal Frere had he been away 
from the flat for more than two or three days 
at a time; and on these few occasions she had 
been able to account for his movements in a 
perfectly satisfactory fashion. Throughout 
this period of time the poor man had never 
taken a real holiday, and she had only re¬ 
frained from telling him that he badly needed 
one because she knew too well that he couldn’t 
afford it. She had eyes in her head and could 
see that, more often than not, he had the 
greatest difficulty in the world in scraping 
together the few shillings that fell due to her 
at the end of the week. But she didn’t much 
mind waiting payment for her personal ser- 
164 


MRS. CUSHIONS ENCOUNTER 


vices; though she did object if her washing 
bills were not paid promptly, these represent¬ 
ing purely business transactions; and when¬ 
ever Mr. Randal Frere found that he hadn’t 
a clean shirt he could always safely assume 
that his last three washing bills were still 
owing. 

In Randal’s estimation Mrs. Cushion was 
merely a slatternly woman with a passion for 
orderliness in everything that did not concern 
her person, and the victim of a mania for 
cleaning saucepans; he would have scorned 
the suggestion that the heart behind her swell¬ 
ing black apron-front beat with the least 
affection for him. Mrs. Cushion was the 
mother of an innumerable horde of children. 
Whenever there was a message for her to be 
delivered at the flat the same child never 
seemed to appear twice; and Randal, had he 
thought about the matter at all, must have 
surmised that her own offspring would more 
than absorb her capacity for love. Certainly 
she rarely made a fuss about her wages; but 
here again he assumed that her forbearance 
in this matter was nothing more than common 
sense: she knew that he hadn’t the money to 
give her. Never for a moment did he suspect 
that this forbearance was directly to be 
attributed to her affectionate good-nature. 

165 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


And thus it was that Randal was blind to 
Mrs. Cushion’s one redeeming quality, and 
an emotion of which she herself had never 
been more conscious than during these past 
three weeks. Mrs. Cushion was, in her own 
language, feeling properly upset. 

He had not breathed a word to her about 
going away; and from an inspection of his 
sparse wardrobe, the day following his dis¬ 
appearance, she was able to infer that he had 
not anticipated having to spend even a single 
night out of town. On the third day she had 
received a letter from him, from an address in 
the country. The letter was much too brief 
for her liking; it merely directed her to send 
him immediately certain articles of attire, 
with a promise that postage should afterwards 
be refunded. The parcel actually cost her 
one-and-ninepence; but she was encouraged to 
trust him to this further amount because, as 
she was quick to observe, the notepaper he 
had used had a rich feel about it: Mrs. 
Cushion, when she was risking her own 
money, was far from being unmindful of such 
considerations as these. The second letter, re¬ 
ceived three days later, contained, along with 
a request for more garments, one brief item 
of news: she was informed, without a word 
of explanation, that the date of his return 
166 


MRS. CUSHION’S ENCOUNTER 

was quite uncertain; and would she therefore 
be good enough to forward all letters until 
further notice. Mrs. Cushion shook her head 
over this communication; she didn’t like the 
sound of it at all. Something was going on 
behind her back; and she resented being kept 
in a state of ignorance. For the last two and 
a half years this young man’s life had been an 
open book to her; and now, without the least 
warning, he had shut it in her face. It was 
only after considerable internal debate that 
she decided to risk another one-and-ninepence 
on the dispatch of this second parcel. The 
third letter arrived a week later, and created 
such a tumult in her mind that she hardly 
knew how to set about the day’s work. It 
contained a ten-pound Bank note. 

Mrs. Cushion had never in her life seen a 
ten-pound Bank note, although she instantly 
recognised it for what it was, a neighbour hav¬ 
ing once allowed her to regard, at arm’s- 
length, a similar piece of paper valued at half 
the amount. She had been impressed, but not 
excited. The sight of this ten-pound note, 
casually folded inside a sheet of notepaper, 
overwhelmed her; she could not credit the 
evidence of her own eyes when she read that 
it was intended to meet arrears of wages, 
unpaid washing bills, and any recent disburse- 

167 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


ments incurred on behalf of that impecunious 
young bachelor, Mr. Randal Frere: the bal¬ 
ance, if any, to be retained by her as a per¬ 
quisite. Such was the playful terminology 
of Randal’s communication; and having 
grasped its implication she again gingerly 
inspected the Bank note before thrusting it 
away somewhere in the region of her waist¬ 
band. On reaching home, after getting the 
children to bed and out of the way, she trans¬ 
ferred it to a brown-paper bag and placed 
the bag underneath the middle of the car¬ 
pet in the front room. If an enemy got to 
know that she was in possession of a ten- 
pound note she felt quite certain that the 
police would speedily be on her track; and 
she was quite unable to see herself walk¬ 
ing into a shop and asking for half a 
dozen candles and a quarter of a pound of 
tea and the change out of ten pounds. Not 
until she had relieved herself of such a dan¬ 
gerous piece of property did she breathe 
freely and feel at liberty to consider the inci¬ 
dent in its less personal aspects. Mr. Randal 
Frere was not in the habit of paying out 
more than he owed; and for as long as she 
had known him he had certainly not been in 
the enjoyment of superfluous ten-pound notes. 
Mrs. Cushion was good at guessing, and 
168 


MRS. CUSHION’S ENCOUNTER 


quickly decided that either a rich relation had 
died or a mysterious benefactor had sprung 
into existence. The first supposition she im¬ 
mediately ruled out: she had every reason 
to believe that Mr. Randal Frere had no 
relations whatsoever, rich or poor. She had 
always been a keen student of his corre¬ 
spondence, and judged by the standard she 
had set as the result of similar investigations 
in other directions, it was a pretty poor show, 
undiversified by the emergence of rich uncles 
and aunts of a promising maturity. She 
therefore concluded that her second supposi¬ 
tion was the correct one. Some personage 
had either put him on his feet or endowed 
him with such wealth that he was now able to 
dispense ten-pound notes with no more 
thought than he had once given to the ex¬ 
penditure of sixpence on a new wire-brush 
for the benefit of the saucepan exhibit. By a 
further process of elimination Mrs. Cushion 
arrived at the conclusion that this unknown 
benefactor was a woman. Mr. Randal Frere 
had considerable charm of manner, with very 
little behind it; and men, she knew, were not 
in the habit of giving jobs to members of 
their own sex on the strength of mere charm 
of manner. This unknown benefactor was 
certainly a woman. 


169 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

The thought was highly displeasing to Mrs. 
Cushion. She had always realised that, sooner 
or later, some girl would come into his life, and 
probably ruin it. If he could hardly main¬ 
tain himself in a state of decency—and his 
washing-bag held no secrets from her—it was 
quite certain that he was not in a position to 
support a wife. On this subject the dictum of 
her late husband particularly appealed to 
her: “ When you’re married a penny bun 
costs twopence.” It was the one inspired 
comment on life to which he had ever given 
utterance; and for years past she had awaited 
an opportunity of making a really dramatic 
use of it. She had promised herself just such 
an opportunity when she should discover 
that Mr. Randal Frere was heading for a 
matrimonial disaster. The moment had come, 
and malignant circumstance had placed the 
young man beyond the reach of her tongue. 
It was one of her life’s greatest disappoint¬ 
ments. She played with the notion of sending 
the momentous declaration by wire, but finally 
abandoned the project because she could so 
easily picture him laughing over her mes¬ 
sage and making some facetious observation 
to his lady-love about the silly old woman who 
was responsible for it. 

His lady-love! The word carried an un- 

170 


MRS. CUSHION'S ENCOUNTER 

savoury connotation in Mrs. Cushion’s ama¬ 
tory lexicon, and she found it significant that 
it should have cropped up in her mind of its 
own accord. She trembled to think what 
sort of woman had got this young man in her 
toils. Lady-love was probably much too 
kind a description; there was a worse word, 
much better suited to the purpose, though she 
was willing to wait for further details before 
definitely pronouncing it. The tragedy was 
that she didn’t in the least know where she 
could acquire them. None of his friends had 
ever been in the habit of visiting the flat; and 
she was no longer able to avail herself of what 
little information his correspondence might 
contain. Although she scrutinised every 
envelope that was addressed to him she never 
gained the slightest clue as to the secret of 
his present activities; and as the days passed 
she noted a gradual diminution in the volume 
of his correspondence, small as it was. Let¬ 
ters were going to him direct, and bills more 
than ever before formed the chief feature of 
the morning’s post. And such bills! All those 
sent under a halfpenny stamp Mrs. Cushion 
examined with a bewildered interest. Mr. 
Randal Frere was ordering suits and shirts 
and socks and shoes with a prodigality that 
must have pulverised the ghost of his dead 

171 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


self. That very morning an account had come 
in for six pairs of silk pyjamas, for a total 
amount that would have maintained herself 
and her family of five in a state of luxury for 
several months on end. Never again would 
the well-worn and oft-repaired veterans of 
the past cause her anxious moments when¬ 
ever they entered the seething cauldron of 
her wash-tub. Never again would she have 
that pleasure, born of a righteous, indigna¬ 
tion, of informing him that if he didn’t buy 
himself some new ones before the week was 
out she would dispose of them to the dustman 
and let him hide his shame as best he could. 
Never again! Never anything again! She 
began to suspect that Mr. Randal Frere was 
not merely finished with his old pyjamas but 
with herself and the flat. Who could this 
woman be for whose sake he was incurring this 
unprecedented expenditure? Mrs. Cushion no 
longer had any hesitation in applying to her 
the foulest names in her slum vocabulary. 
This bill for six pairs of silk pyjamas was the 
most dreadful insight into the ways of a 
wicked world she had ever been vouchsafed. 
She was still under the spell of this apocalypse 
when she heard a knock at the door, rather a 
timid knock, the knock of a stranger. She 
pushed the bill back into its envelope and 

172 


MRS . CUSHION’S ENCOUNTER 

slipped into the kitchen-scullery; she didn’t 
feel equal to meeting anyone at the moment. 

The outer door slowly opened, and Mrs. 
Cushion, with one eye round the corner of her 
own door, beheld with amazement the cau¬ 
tious entry of one of the most charming young 
women she had ever set eyes on. The visitor, 
with several pretty turns of the head—a suffi¬ 
cient testimony to the naturalness of her 
charm, since she was quite unaware that 
one large jealous eye was consuming her with 
the malignance of its gaze—casually inspected 
the carpet, the ceiling, the pictures on the 
walls and the antique timepiece on the mantel¬ 
shelf, which she appeared to recognise. But 
it was the combination lounge-bed that 
attracted most of her attention; she regarded 
it with a merry amusement that filled Mrs. 
Cushion with the worst possible suspicions 
and very nearly caused her to sally forth into 
the room and give positive expression to them. 
Mrs. Cushion, in fact, was distraught with the 
number and the variety of the surmises that 
afflicted her mind. Who was this young 
hussy? Was she in any way to be associated 
with that incriminating purchase of six pairs 
of silk pyjamas, the bill for which was actu¬ 
ally lying under her pert little nose? Mrs. 
Cushion could no longer restrain herself under 

173 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

the burden of this staggering conjecture; her 
indignation boiled over; she flung herself into 
the centre of the room with a minatory— 

“ Good-morning, miss.” 

“ Thank you,” said Christina, slowly sink¬ 
ing into the vast depths of the faded crimson 
lounge-bed—“ That’s a compliment! And— 
good-morning!” 

In face of this exhibition of self-assurance 
Mrs. Cushion had to hold her mouth tight; 
otherwise she might have said anything, and a 
little too much. Even in a crisis like this she 
remained conscious of her true station in life; 
it was not for her to criticise her betters, until 
she knew. ... So the minx was married, or 
pretended she was; and sat there as calm as 
you please, without attempting to explain how 
she came to be in the room at all. Indeed, 
she gave Mrs. Cushion the impression that 
she was expecting to be told what she, Mrs. 
Cushion, was doing there. The young impu¬ 
dence! 

“ Have you—excuse me—called to see Mr. 
Frere?” 

Mrs. Cushion regretted that she couldn’t 
lead off on a more challenging note; she was 
annoyed that the “ excuse me ” had slipped 
from her lips; there was no reason at all why 
she should have to excuse herself for daring 
174 


MRS. CUSHION’S ENCOUNTER 

to ask this intruder a perfectly proper ques¬ 
tion; a question, in fact, that it was her duty 
to ask. And there was no reply; she might 
just as well have addressed her remarks to 
one of her beloved saucepans; and the tension 
of the silence that followed distressed no one 
but herself. It was outrageous; she had to 
speak or suffocate. 

“ Excuse me, but if you’ve called to see 
Mr. Frere-” 

“ No,” murmured the imperturbable Chris¬ 
tina, “ I haven’t.” 

“ Then,” began Mrs. Cushion on a high 

note of excitement, “ then-” and broke 

off. The wild notion had just occurred to her 
that the flat was now to let and that she had 
seen the last of Mr. Randal Frere. She sud¬ 
denly felt sick at heart, and with due humility 
was about to ask if madam had an order to 
view, when that surprising apparition of light 
and loveliness sprang to her feet, brushed 
lightly past her, and gracefully peeped inside 
the kitchen-scullery door. 

“ What a lovely lot of darling little sauce¬ 
pans!” 

Christina was really entranced; she looked 
as if she were on the point of blowing them 
one of her gossamer kisses; and Mrs. Cushion, 
in normal circumstances, would have been 

175 




A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

ready to fall at the feet of one who displayed 
such delight in her immaculate collection. 
Christina’s next question laid her low. 

“ And do you, Mrs.-” Christina’s voice 

deliciously faded into nothingness. “ Do you 
keep them all so beautiful?” 

Mrs. Cushion was incapable of further 
resistance; she half nodded her head, and 
smiled sheepishly. 

“ I think they’re wonderful said Chris¬ 
tina, and resumed her seat on the lounge. 
Once more her eyes roamed the room, and 
she gave a little sigh. It was the most lan¬ 
guishing sound that Mrs. Cushion, with the 
woes and misfortunes of a lifetime behind her, 
had ever been privileged to hear; she sighed 
in response: a heavy, barbarous sigh that 
shook her bosom. 

“ Might I ask,” she inquired weakly, and 
not too elegantly, “ who you might be?” 

“ That’s easily answered,” said Christina, 
with a twirl of the foot. “ I’m Mrs. Randal 
Frere.” 

Mrs. Cushion withered under this declara¬ 
tion of her visitor’s identity; she sternly 
looked her up and down; from the small hat 
that was set so perfectly on her head as to 
seem one with it, to the exiguous foot that 
continued to twirl in the air. Never in her 


176 



MRS . CUSHION’S ENCOUNTER 

life had she been so grossly insulted. His 
wife! The idea of it! 

“ I don’t believe it,” said Mrs. Cushion, 
defiantly folding her arms over her breast. 
“ I never heard of such a thing!” 

“You don’t—you haven’t?” murmured 
Christina indulgently. “ Hasn’t he ever told 
you about me?” 

“ I should think not indeed!” Mrs. Cushion 
expressed in her tone of voice a sense of the 
outraged dignity of womanhood. “ How 
should he?” she added with a tremendous toss 
of the head. 

“ I tell you,” said Christina, speaking very 
slowly and giving her a look that was intended 
to put her in her place, “ I tell you that I am 
Mrs. Randal Frere. Aren’t I to be allowed 
to belong to my own husband?” 

Christina made the inquiry with such a 
wicked innocence of manner that Mrs. 
Cushion was relieved of the doubt that had 
suddenly assailed her: no good woman would 
petrify you with a glance at one moment and 
start wheedling you the next. Nevertheless 
she had laid claim to her identity with a con¬ 
viction that commanded respect. A new and 
yet more horrible doubt seized Mrs. Cushion’s 
whirling mind. Had this man, the faithless 
creature she had looked after for the past 

177 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

two and a half years, kept something from 
her? Could it be that this woman was, after 
all, his wife? Mrs. Cushion was ready to 
crumple up under this weight of doubt; and 
all the while the woman on the lounge was 
watching her with an intentness that made 
her feel as naked as a trussed-up chicken, 
awaiting an opportunity to get out of her all 
she wanted to know. Mrs. Cushion was no 
longer at a loss to understand the purpose 
of this visit. 

“ Where is Mr. Frere?” said Christina, with 
a dangerous evenness of tone and without 
moving as much as an eyelid. 

“ I don’t know,” said Mrs. Cushion, a little 
breathlessly. 

“ You—don’t—know?” drawled Christina, 
with a terrifying emphasis on each single 
word. 

“ Only that he’s somewhere in the country,” 
spluttered Mrs. Cushion. 

“ I don’t think so, Mrs.-?” 

“ Cushion,” breathed that lady from the 
depths of her bosom. 

“Ah, Cushion!” murmured Christina 
brightly, with a smile that would have 
devastated anyone but another woman. 
“ Such a comfortable homely sort of name!” 

Mrs. Cushion was quite unable to decide 
178 



MRS. CUSHION’S ENCOUNTER 

whether this was intended for sarcasm or com¬ 
pliment; and all she did was to grasp her arms 
yet more tightly over her breast. 

“ I don’t think so, Mrs. Cushion,” con¬ 
tinued Christina. “ I’ve caught sight of him, 
here in London, three times in the past fort¬ 
night; and this morning I passed him on the 
other side of the road.” 

“ He was with another woman?” gasped 
Mrs. Cushion, quite overlooking her previous 
antipathy in the common danger that con¬ 
fronted them. 

“ I think,” murmured Christina, “ you are 
forgetting yourself, Mrs. Cushion.” 

The emphasis she gave to these two last 
words was calculated to put Mrs. Cushion in 
her place for all time; and it would have done, 
had Mrs. Cushion been an ordinary woman. 
As it was she knew that this young person 
couldn’t put on airs with her when her hus¬ 
band—if he was her husband—was parading 
the streets of London with a woman who 
wasn’t his lawful wife. Mrs. Cushion’s sense 
of values was such that any sufferer from the 
moral delinquencies of a husband or a wife 
was reduced in the social scale and com¬ 
manded less respect from the lower ranks. 

“ He was with another woman,” predicated 
Mrs. Cushion, no longer allowing the poor 

179 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

deserted young wife the courtesy of a query. 
“ I knew it! I knew it from the very first!” 

“ Explain yourself, please,” said Christina 
peremptorily. “ I want to know everything. 
That’s why I’m here.” 

Mrs. Cushion sniffed the air, and prepared 
herself for the most tremendous treat that had 
ever fallen to her lot. She forgot her own 
distress at the confirmation of her previous 
suspicions for the grateful delight of being 
able to put it across this domineering young 
female. She embarked on an orgy of descrip¬ 
tion and conjecture, concluding with a vivid 
narrative centring around the deplorable his¬ 
tory of the six pairs of silk pyjamas. And she 
was in no mood to mince her words. If Chris¬ 
tina didn’t blush, as might have been expected 
of any decent woman, it was only because she 
was as brazen as they made them; and she 
pounced on the bill for these garments of 
shame and thrust it before Christina’s un¬ 
blenching eyes. 

“ I notice that it isn’t paid yet,” was her 
only comment; and she laughed softly. 

“ Paid!” snarled the irate Mrs. Cushion, 
seeing that the real victim of this disgraceful 
transaction was not merely unabashed but 
apparently unconcerned. “ Paid! It never 
will be paid!” She took in a very deep 
180 


MRS. CUSHION’S ENCOUNTER 


breath. “ Unless” she concluded venom¬ 
ously, “ she pays it for him!” 

“ It would be only fair if she did,” mur¬ 
mured Christina, “ if, as you suggest, she 
insisted on them,” and rose from her seat, 
went up to the mirror over the mantelshelf, 
and started to dab powder on her nose. 

Mrs. Cushion watched her rise, watched her 
walk, and watched her dab powder on her 
nose; and gazed upon her as if the very spirit 
of evil were confined in that slim young body. 
This room that housed it would never be the 
same place again. To the end of the inter¬ 
view Mrs. Cushion remained speechless. 

“ So very nice of you, dear Mrs. Cushion, 
to tell me all this,” remarked Christina over 
her shoulder, between two skilful dabs on the 
point of her nose. “ I’m so grateful,” she 
added, now doing something to her lips. 
“ When I have time I shall come to see you 
again. I have enjoyed myself. Thank you 
so much,” and with an unrequited smile of 
farewell tripped out of the room. 

But it was a very thoughtful Christina that 
caught the train for Hampstead. 


181 


CHAPTER X 


GODFREY IN ECLIPSE 

G ODFREY grunted. It was the usual mes¬ 
sage, delivered by Ella with a monotony 
of accent that made him want to throttle the 
girl. He was sick and tired of being told, 
everlastingly in the same tone of voice, that 
his wife had gone up to town again and would 
not be back in time for dinner. He might just 
as well not have had a wife at all When he 
left home in the morning she was fast asleep in 
bed; and when she returned at night, after 
the day’s diversions, he was usually already in 
bed, either asleep or pretending to be asleep. 
He couldn’t trust himself to speak; he couldn’t 
stand her cheerfulness between the hours of 
one and two in the morning; one little word 
from her about herself and her activities, and 
he would have brought the house down over 
their heads. Not every night, of course. Two 
or three evenings a week he would find her at 
home, prepared to play the dutiful wife until 
she could find an excuse for pushing him off 
to bed. He either looked pale or tired; and if 
he wasn’t pale or tired, but obviously hilarious 
and rubicund, he was informed that he was 
probably in for a very bad cold, and pushed 
off to bed. He would never have believed it 
possible that any woman, least of all his own 
182 


GODFREY IN ECLIPSE 


wife, could so utterly have changed her nature 
in the course of a few weeks. 

But he had to admit that the Marjorie he 
had known had ceased to exist. She had sud¬ 
denly evolved a new and a surprising per¬ 
sonality. She was no longer Marjorie, but 
Mrs. Godfrey Jobb, whose only relation 
to himself was contained in her name; and 
whereas his own name conveyed nothing to 
the great public, apart from one or two busi¬ 
ness acquaintances who associated it with a 
certain brand of pills, that same name, with 
the prefix of the married woman, was a power 
and a portent throughout the length and 
breadth of the land. Every newspaper reader 
who made a habit of glancing through the 
gossip columns of his particular journal was 
familiar with the name of Mrs. Godfrey Jobb; 
and the students of the illustrated weeklies 
were equally familiar with her photograph. 
To Godfrey these photographs were one of 
the most deplorable developments in the vogue 
for Mrs. Godfrey Jobb, the charming author¬ 
ess of The Revolt of Eve. He had always 
been of the opinion that his wife was a good- 
looking woman; but he had never before 
realised that her beauty was so ethereal in its 
charm. On those rare occasions when they 
met in broad daylight he found himself glanc- 

183 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


ing at her and wondering if this indeed could 
be the woman over whose name these photo¬ 
graphs appeared. 

But he would not have been violently dis¬ 
turbed about these photographs had the 
papers been content to leave him out of their 
full-page pictorial tributes to his talented and 
witty wife; that they did nothing of the kind 
was entirely Marjorie’s fault. For at least 
half a decade an early photograph of himself, 
in a faded little frame that she had bought 
specially for it, had reposed in a conspicuous 
position on her dressing-table; she had told 
him more than once that this photograph and 
this particular frame, although she had 
paid only one and sixpence ha’penny for 
it, were among her dearest possessions. 
Recently both the photograph and the 
frame had disappeared from their place of 
honour. Portions of the frame he had after¬ 
wards discovered in a neglected waste-paper 
basket; and the next he had seen of the photo¬ 
graph was a reproduction of it in one of the 
illustrated weeklies. A portrait of Mrs. God¬ 
frey Jobb in one of her latest poses occupied 
forty-eight square inches; and a smudgy blob, 
that purported to be Mr. Godfrey Jobb, a 
well-known City man, was inset in the right- 
hand bottom corner in two and a half square 

184 


GODFREY IN ECLIPSE 


inches of space. And this same smudgy blob 
continued to appear in similar periodicals in 
varying degrees of indistinctness. Godfrey 
found that he never looked the same man 
twice. Sometimes he didn’t look like a man 
at all, but either an overgrown schoolboy try¬ 
ing to look grown-up or a senile creature try¬ 
ing to look young; and whereas the caption- 
writers, in describing the charms and the 
accomplishments of Mrs. Godfrey Jobb, ex¬ 
hausted every linguistic device in their efforts 
never to say the same thing twice in the same 
way, he remained throughout plain Mr. God¬ 
frey Jobb, the well-known City man, hus¬ 
band of the above lady. 

These pictorial indignities he had borne 
without comment; but he had reproached 
his wife on the subject of her unscrupulous 
use of his treasured photograph, the only 
result being that she had invited him to have a 
better one taken; whereupon he had pointed 
out that he was not in the happy position of 
always finding half a dozen photographers in 
wait on the doorstep, willing to undertake the 
work free of charge. And in these days he 
had no guineas to waste. Since she had 
become famous Marjorie’s calls on his ex¬ 
chequer had never been so frequent and so 
unblushing. She appeared to spend more on 

185 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

a single visit to town than he could spend in 
a month. Each new photograph, each differ¬ 
ent function, necessitated a visit to the dress¬ 
maker. One or two of these functions he had 
attended with her, and thereafter sworn never 
again to come under the immediate public 
gaze as the husband of Mrs. Godfrey Jobb. 
At the last of these functions, where a splen¬ 
did assemblage of literary and journalistic 
stars had foregathered to do honour to the 
leading women writers of the day, one vener¬ 
able speaker, who confined his remarks to 
Mrs. Godfrey Jobb, after descanting on the 
superlative significance of her work, her 
charm of manner, her beauty of person, had 
occasion to make a passing reference to her 
husband. Instantly a hundred eyes had 
turned in Godfrey’s direction, examined and 
assessed him, and instantly dismissed him 
from further consideration. It had been one 
of the most humiliating moments of his life; 
and he had felt that henceforth, if he were al¬ 
lowed to exist at all, it would merely be on 
sufferance. 

But these functions, and other diversions 
which in general he refused to attend, could 
not of themselves have absorbed the sums of 
money he advanced to her, and Godfrey did 
not hesitate to believe that it was Mr. Randal 


186 


GODFREY IN ECLIPSE 


Frere who was growing rich at his expense. It 
was too delicate a subject to broach to Mar¬ 
jorie at this juncture. She had insisted from 
the first that she was only borrowing this 
money from him, and that she would repay 
every penny of it when she received her first 
huge cheque from the publishers of The 
Revolt of Eve —about nine months hence: 
by which time, Godfrey bitterly reflected, he 
would be a ruined man. Once he had at¬ 
tempted faintly to remonstrate with her; but 
she had fiercely told him that no husband 
worthy of the name would hesitate about 
lending money to his wife when she really 
needed it, whether or not there was the least 
likelihood of his ever getting it back; and she 
had produced a little book showing the pre¬ 
cise date and the amount of all his wretched 
advances. And Godfrey, already overbur¬ 
dened with the problems and the new anxie¬ 
ties of the equally wretched pill business, had 
weakly submitted to these extortions for the 
sake of buying a temporary peace. 

That this peace could be no more than tem¬ 
porary he fully recognised. The problem of 
the strain on his financial resources was as 
nothing compared with that other problem 
presented by Mr. Randal Frere himself. The 
first salient fact about Mr. Randal Frere was 


187 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

that he had created Mrs. Godfrey Jobb, and 
although Marjorie, in the adulation of the 
hour, appeared to have overlooked the real 
source of her rise to fame and influence, God¬ 
frey, with his usual realism, was willing to 
give Mr. Randal Frere sole credit for this 
achievement. How precisely he had con¬ 
trived to make her famous was a mystery that 
Godfrey felt he could not decently attempt 
to penetrate. The brilliant Mrs. Godfrey 
Jobb had been launched upon the world with a 
more than tropic suddenness; and it was Mr. 
Randal Frere who had launched her, with the 
co-operation of Langfield of the Morning Sun. 
Langfield, who was always ready to do Ran¬ 
dal a good turn because he knew that he was 
often in the way of picking up exclusive items 
of society gossip, had found it possible to 
spare a corner for the short report of an inter¬ 
view with a certain Mrs. Godfrey Jobb, the 
theme of whose recent novel, The Revolt of 
Eve, betrayed an uncanny anticipation of 
Professor Conti’s discoveries, related in the 
previous day’s issue. The readers of the 
Morning Sun had forgotten every word of 
these discoveries in face of that journal’s 
latest onslaught on the Government for its 
refusal to conform to the vociferous wishes of 
the Morning Sun in certain high policies of 


188 


GODFREY IN ECLIPSE 


state; but they were reintroduced to the 
theme of the novel by a short series of skil¬ 
fully devised questions, which the Professor 
himself might have answered in precisely 
similar terms. The interview concluded with 
a note on Mrs. Godfrey Jobb’s home sur¬ 
roundings, the name of her pet dog and of her 
favourite flower, and a remark to the effect 
that she might aptly be described as one of 
the women of to-morrow. 

On the whole Randal was disappointed with 
this effort; along with an inconspicuous para¬ 
graph in one of the evening papers it repre¬ 
sented the sum-total of his achievement as 
Mrs. Godfrey Jobb’s self-appointed Press 
agent. It wasn’t exciting enough; it wouldn’t 
make people talk; and until people began to 
talk, any amount of discussion, in print, con¬ 
cerning Mrs. Godfrey Jobb’s pet dog and fa¬ 
vourite flower would not help to sell a single 
copy of her torpid work. Randal, in fact, did 
not know which way to turn next; all he could 
do was to lift up his eyes to heaven and ask 
for a miracle. He did so, and, with his accus¬ 
tomed luck, the miracle happened. A certain 
popular divine in a fashionable place of 
worship preached a sermon on the subject 
of Woman. He was notoriously a confirmed 
bachelor and a recluse from his earliest days; 


189 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


but he was nevertheless an unquestioned 
authority on the subject of Woman, and 
women flocked to hear him talk so divinely 
about themselves. In the course of his re¬ 
marks he referred, by way of example, to a 
certain unnatural work that had lately been 
brought to his notice in the columns of the 
public Press. It was written in a spirit that 
was contrary to the law of God and man; it 
was an offence against Nature and yet an¬ 
other apostate attempt to dissolve those beau¬ 
tiful relations that ought to subsist between 
men and women. He blushed to pronounce 
the name of this infidel subversive work in 
that holy place; but he had perforce to disre¬ 
gard his own feelings in the matter for the 
sake of that Christian congregation there 
assembled. The name of the book was The 
Revolt of Eve, and he adjured his loving flock 
never to allow a copy of it to enter their pure 
and enlightened homes. After a Biblical 
excursus he concluded with a lofty denuncia¬ 
tion of its perpetrator as the archetype of 
that dreadful adumbration, “ The Woman of 
Tomorrow.” 

From that moment the boom began, and it 
was RandaPs business merely to turn the 
stream of publicity into the correct channels. 
For a few days he insisted that Mrs. Godfrey 
190 


GODFREY IN ECLIPSE 


Jobb herself should remain invisible to the 
curious world; he had no confidence in her 
ability to rise to the situation. He therefore 
made himself the repository of her opinions 
on all those subjects on which her advice was 
sought by an ardent Press. Randal spent 
half the day in compiling pleasant little anec¬ 
dotes about an entirely fictitious personality 
whom he labelled Mrs. Godfrey Jobb; and 
the rest of it in distributing them to the right 
quarters. Mrs. Godfrey Jobb was never avail¬ 
able on the telephone; but Randal, as the 
keeper of her conscience in all its manifesta¬ 
tions, was able to answer satisfactorily all 
inquiries. And he never made a mistake, but 
gave the public and the Press the stuff they 
wanted. The Press wanted good head-line 
stuff, and they got it; the public wanted 
something that would tickle their jaded ap¬ 
petites, and they got it. Within a matter of 
days Mrs. Godfrey Jobb, as the first exemplar 
of “The Woman of To-morrow,” had become 
a legend in the land; she had contrived to 
refurbish an old topic with such success that 
newspapers and their readers were able to 
persuade themselves that here at last was 
something new to talk about. The present- 
day woman had been analysed and dissected 
into so many little bits for the purpose of 

191 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


public and private debate that it was impos¬ 
sible to draw any clear conclusion from the 
mass of evidence available; whereas the 
woman of to-morrow opened up an infinite 
vista of speculation, unhampered by facts or 
realities. The woman of to-morrow might be 
better or she might be worse; but she would 
inevitably be different; and over this par¬ 
ticular argument there could be, happily 
enough, no finality. 

In presenting to the newspapers this inex¬ 
haustible theme Mrs. Godfrey Jobb con¬ 
ferred a service on those contributors who had 
worn every topic threadbare, from religion 
downwards; and they seized the opportunity 
by discussing the woman of to-morrow from 
every conceivable and impossible angle. 
Leaders of thought in all sections of the 
community were invited to deliver themselves 
of their opinions, for immoderate fees; and 
lesser authorities, for the sake of the conse¬ 
quent publicity, were only too delighted to 
deliver their own for nothing. Those few 
literary, social and political notabilities who 
were too dignified to identify themselves with 
a common newspaper symposium were never¬ 
theless roped in by impecunious journalists 
who refused to take no for an answer and 
were clever enough to turn a half-minute 

192 


GODFREY IN ECLIPSE 


interview on a doorstep into a perfectly good 
half-column report. Books and treatises 
under the title of “The Woman of To-mor¬ 
row/’ and its variants, were announced for 
immediate publication; and collections of 
newspaper articles were already on sale at the 
book-stalls. So vast a literature of the sub¬ 
ject was springing into existence that Mrs. 
Godfrey Jobb herself might have been sub¬ 
merged under the weight of it had not Randal 
carefully ensured that her name and The 
Revolt of Eve should remain at the forefront 
of the discussion as its grand progenitrix. 

It was not until her reputation was firmly 
secured that he allowed her to make her first 
public appearance, when there was nothing for 
her to do but to look charming and to say very 
little. The result was that she immediately 
won the hearts of all beholders by the extreme 
modesty of her demeanour; and it was ac¬ 
counted to her a virtue that never, in the way 
of private conversation, did she attempt to 
parade those high intellectual attainments 
with which she was demonstrably endowed. 
Those few gentlemen of the Press who were 
privileged to obtain direct contact with her 
were overwhelmed by the thoughtfulness she 
displayed for the necessities of their position. 
What they wanted her to say, she said; when 


193 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

they put the very words into her mouth, she 
merely smiled acquiescence; and they bowed 
themselves out of her presence with the com¬ 
fortable feeling that they were clever fellows 
indeed to have interpreted so accurately the 
innermost thoughts of this gracious celebrity. 
Photographers adored her. She called at their 
studios at the first whispered invitation; she 
was never in a hurry to be off; at their request 
she would interminably modify the tilt of 
the chin or the slant of an eyebrow. And 
she photographed beautifully; so beautifully, 
in fact, that the most hardened of these 
photographers, when he had finished touching 
up the negative, was taken aback by the love¬ 
liness of the vision he had created. 

Mrs. Godfrey Jobb, then, had not merely 
been launched; she had arrived; and the 
limits of publicity could no farther go without 
recourse to the advertisement columns of the 
Press. Any manufacturer of a product that 
appealed to women, who specialised in testi¬ 
monials, would willingly have paid her for the 
privilege of stating that she would never 
dream of using any other brand; but for the 
moment Randal refused to do more than 
acknowledge with thanks the vast quantities 
of goods that were sent her with this end in 
view: not until the wells of publicity were 
194 


GODFREY IN ECLIPSE 


drying up would he have recourse to these in¬ 
ferior methods. Moreover, he had thought 
it wise to defer this once to her husband’s 
wishes. When several boxes of Aunt Mary’s 
Liver Pills had arrived in the house, accom¬ 
panied by a carefully-worded intimation from 
the manufacturers that if Mrs. Godfrey Jobb 
would be so good as to test their efficacy and 
let them know the happy result they would 
be pleased to communicate with her again, 
Godfrey had raised such a storm as would 
have aroused the whole neighbourhood in any 
suburban area. The terms of peace were 
that never, in any circumstances, should his 
wife’s name appear in the advertisement 
columns of the Press; and he had briefly added 
that he was already more than sick of the sight 
of it in other places. This had been his first 
spoken protest against the recent domestic 
upheaval. 

To-night Godfrey was getting ready for 
another outburst; at whatever cost he was 
determined to get this young and unassuming 
Mr. Randal Frere out of the house. He real¬ 
ised now that he had been a fool ever to have 
allowed him to stay on after the first night of 
his arrival; but he had so quickly made him¬ 
self indispensable to Marjorie in her rapid rise 
to fame that his departure would have imme- 

195 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


diately resulted in her crashing down to that 
level of mediocrity to which she properly be¬ 
longed. Although she hardly realised it her¬ 
self she was nothing more than Randal’s 
puppet and mouthpiece; and had not Randal 
been present to pull the strings and to put 
the right words into her mouth, she would 
have been revealed for what she was—a 
charming nonentity who, by a fortuitous cir¬ 
cumstance, had set the fashion of the hour. 
And Godfrey, not being blind to the true 
facts of the situation, had not the heart to 
bring her down to earth by five minutes’ plain 
speaking. Nevertheless he was determined to 
put an end to the present domestic order. 
Years seemed to have elapsed since he had 
last been able to set foot in his own house 
without expecting to find Mr. Randal Frere 
springing up from some odd corner to greet 
him. The trouble with this young man was 
that he was too confoundedly polite to make 
it easy to have such a row with him as would 
settle the matter once and for all. His con¬ 
duct was exemplary; he worked hard; he 
never claimed to be anything more than Mrs. 
Godfrey Jobb’s assiduous servant; and he 
safely piloted her through all the difficulties 
that attended the eminence of the position 
she occupied. It was not merely her desire 
196 


GODFREY IN ECLIPSE 


but almost essential that he should accom¬ 
pany her on her visits to town and attend the 
functions that she attended; and although 
it might not be generally known that there 
was any business relationship between them, 
his presence at these functions and his con¬ 
stantly being seen in her company would 
excite no comment, because it was well under¬ 
stood that Mr. Randal Frere made it his 
particular hobby in life to keep up with the 
latest movement and to be in with anybody 
who was at all worth while. 

Godfrey, then, had really no cause for com¬ 
plaint. His wife had asked him to take her to 
these various functions and to meet the people 
with whom she now spent the greater part of 
her time; and he had refused. His reluctance 
to be trotted out as her husband was no rea¬ 
son at all why she should not accept the vari¬ 
ous invitations she received; and Randal, he 
had to admit, was quite obviously the one 
person most competent to take charge of her 
on these occasions. He would probably have 
made a mess of things himself; from past 
experience he already knew that it was no 
easy matter to face the world as the husband 
of Mrs. Godfrey Jobb. Again and again he 
had argued these points over in his mind, and 
as many times been driven back to the conclu- 

197 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

sion that it was entirely his own fault that he 
should find himself with a grievance against 
Mr. Randal Frere, that most perfectly be¬ 
haved of young men. The whole position, of 
course, would be changed had he the least 
reason to suppose that Randal’s relations with 
Marjorie were warmer than was permissible 
within the bounds of propriety. There had 
not been a hint of any such development; and 
it wasn’t a crime that they should appear to 
get on quite well together. 

But emotion was one thing, logic another; 
and the more logical Mr. Randal Frere’s right 
to remain in the house seemed to become, the 
fiercer was Godfrey’s determination to have 
him out of it. He was half ashamed to return 
home at night and find Ella lying in wait for 
him with the usual message. He hated having 
to dine alone, with Ella hovering over him as 
if he were a lost soul in a wilderness of space. 
The room took on tremendous proportions in 
the silence that so strangely encompassed it 
and grew on his nerves to such an extent 
that he was continually on the point of giving 
instructions that he would have his dinner 
brought up to him in the study whenever he 
had occasion to dine alone. So far he had re¬ 
frained from giving these instructions. They 
would signalise a definite revolution in the 


198 


GODFREY IN ECLIPSE 


conduct of the household. He could see Ella, 
at the first opportunity, rushing away to im¬ 
part the news to Mrs. Meadows; and Mrs. 
Meadows would lift her hands in astonish¬ 
ment, and then solemnly wipe them on her 
apron as if she were washing them clean of the 
whole dreadful business.... The two of them 
would shake their heads together and mutter 
their worst suspicions and bemoan the fate of 
yet another unfortunate husband. It was a 
devastating thought that they probably knew 
more about Randal’s relations with Marjorie 
than he did himself. 

But to-night he did give instructions that he 
proposed to dine in the study, and he had 
dined there, under conditions of considerable 
discomfort. He suspected that Ella and Mrs. 
Meadows had conspired to make the experi¬ 
ence as unpleasant as possible so that he 
should not be tempted to repeat it. After 
dinner he had caught Mrs. Meadows taking 
a surreptitious glance at him from the attic 
landing. That was it! He had suddenly be¬ 
come a strange sort of animal within the con¬ 
fines of his own house! Of course he couldn’t 
blame Mrs. Meadows for taking such a deep 
interest in his matrimonial affairs; she had 
been an integral part of the establishment for 
so long that she would naturally feel con- 

199 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

cerned to witness the trend of recent events. 
Nevertheless her mere presence in that house 
was a continual reproach to him. As a result 
of Marjorie’s insistence he had weakly con¬ 
sented to allow her to remain there after her 
deplorable performance on the night of the 
very first day of this new regime. He saw 
now that that moment had been a turning- 
point in the previously uneventful history of 
their married life. It had not been a simple 
question of deferring to her wishes in the 
matter; she had definitely overborne his will; 
she had registered a triumph from which 
he had never completely recovered. Other¬ 
wise-! 

Godfrey viciously flung volume one of 
Green’s Short History of the English People 
into the far corner of the room. He had 
mapped out for himself that winter a course 
of reading that would enable him to recover 
the ground he had lost as a result of his failure 
to live up to similar resolutions during past 
years. Green’s History appeared first on his 
list of books to be read, and he had made five 
successive annual attempts to read it, with¬ 
out ever getting beyond the third chapter of 
volume one. This year, in face of Marjorie’s 
defection, he had resolved to set out on his 
self-imposed task rather earlier than usual. 

200 


GODFREY IN ECLIPSE 


And this was the outcome of his latest at¬ 
tempt! His only refuge lay in sleep; and. 
with a last savage survey of that room in 
which he and Marjorie had spent together so 
many placid hours, he went to bed. 

He was still wide awake when he heard Mar¬ 
jorie and Randal return home. They were 
not so late as he had expected they would be, 
and he was sorry to have missed the oppor¬ 
tunity of presenting his ultimatum to Randal 
there and then. But now that his mind was 
made up, somehow or other he couldn’t pic¬ 
ture himself telling that bland and unassum¬ 
ing young man that he was forthwith to clear 
out of the house; it would have seemed a posi¬ 
tively brutal thing to do. Marjorie herself 
would have to undertake this delicate mission. 
Godfrey groaned at this despairing conclu¬ 
sion; it was intolerable that he should for 
ever remain a victim of his finer feelings. 

“ Well, good-night, Randal.” 

“ Good-night, Marjorie.” 

Godfrey groaned again as their voices came 
to him through the door. Marjorie had 
started calling him by his Christian name be¬ 
fore the first week was out; he was, after all, 
as she had explained to her husband, such a 
boy.. .. And Randal, knowing that life was 
short and finding “Mrs. Godfrey Jobb” rather 

201 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

a mouthful, had fallen into line. But Godfrey 
did not like the sound of their voices on the 
other side of his bedroom door. Marjorie’s 
good-night was beautifully unconcerned, and 
Randal’s not less so; but a long evening’s 
intimacy had preceded this merely temporary 
farewell, and a whole succession of vivid 
images flitted through Godfrey’s brain as he 
lay still in the chilly darkness. 

“ You awake, darling?” 

Despite the term of endearment Godfrey 
could have sworn that the note of intimacy he 
had detected in her voice a moment ago had 
been succeeded by another that was casual in 
its light-heartedness, and even a little insin¬ 
cere. 

“ I am,” said Godfrey, with his face to the 
wall. 

“ Tired?” asked Marjorie, putting some 
powder on her nose even at this late hour of 
the night. 

“ No,” growled Godfrey. 

“ That’s a good thing!” She sat on the 
edge of his bed and pulled back the clothes so 
that she could get a glimpse of his face. “ Be¬ 
cause I’ve got some important news for you.” 

Godfrey’s only response was another growl. 

“ We’re going to move to a flat in town.” 

“We’re what!” cried Godfrey, leaping 


202 


GODFREY IN ECLIPSE 


from his pillow and grasping the bedclothes in 
both his hands. “ Say that again!” 

“ We’re going to move to a flat in town,” 
resumed Marjorie, speaking with a calm deter¬ 
mination. “ You really must understand, 
Godfrey, that it is so frightfully tiring having 
to run backwards and forwards like this.” 

“ But no one-” 

“ Randal says,” broke in Marjorie, with an 
air of finality, “ that it is most important that 
I should keep in touch with the right people. 
Besides, I’m only just beginning-” 

Mrs. Godfrey Jobb allowed the oath that 
escaped her husband’s lips to pass unnoticed. 

“ And after the most terrific search,” she 
continued brightly, “we’ve found a lovely 
little flat, beautifully furnished. In Chelsea, 
you know. There’s one very large room with 
a sort of musicians’ gallery which is just what 
we want for entertaining, and Randal 
says-” 

Godfrey let fly another oath, in which Mr. 
Randal Frere was severely implicated. This 
time she condescended to notice it, and gave 
her husband a long reproachful look. Having 
thus indicated that she regarded herself as 
being a thoroughly ill-used wife, she an¬ 
nounced plaintively, in a tone that was in¬ 
tended to reveal her extreme disappointment 

203 





A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

with his ungracious reception of her pro¬ 
posals: 

“ And I did find out that there’s a bus that 
will take you direct to Watling Street.” 

“ You’ll jolly well stay where you are, my 
girl,” said Godfrey with the utmost ferocity. 
“ I’ll see myself damned in hell before I start 
messing about with buses at nine o’clock in the 
morning,” and buried his head in the pillow 
and dragged up the clothes to his chin. 

“ Your wretched pill business always did 
come first with you.” 

“ That’s a lie!” thundered Godfrey, once 
more sitting bolt upright. “ A grotesque lie! 
The matter with you is that success has turned 
your silly head. If anyone had told me a 
month ago-” 

“ If you’d taken my advice and sold the 
wretched business when you had the oppor¬ 
tunity, there wouldn’t have been anything of 
this. Of course,” she added, with rather less 
heat but in too lofty a tone to represent any 
earnest attempt at conciliation, “I know that 
it must be difficult for you to take a reason¬ 
able view of things with this dreadful Figgins 
man doing his best to ruin you.” 

“ My business,” stormed Godfrey, “is 
quite all right. I don’t know that Figgins has 
made a ha’porth of difference to me.” 

204 



GODFREY IN ECLIPSE 


“ Oh!” She might just as well have said 
that she didn’t for one moment believe that 
he was telling her the truth. “ You might 
have told me before.” 

“ Quite/’ commented Godfrey bitterly. 
“ You’ve always been so desperately inter¬ 
ested in my business affairs. Perhaps you’ll 
have more time when your Mr. Randal Frere 
has cleared out of the house; and if he 
hasn’t the good sense to leave of his own 
accord-” 

“ Don’t be horrible/’ protested Marjorie. 
“We shall all be leaving. I’ve taken the flat 
anyway. There’s only a small premium, and 
to-morrow-” 

“ To-morrow,” shouted Godfrey, “I shall 
put an end to all this nonsense.” 

“ To-morrow,” murmured Marjorie, “you’ll 
be in a much better temper.” And having 
implanted a brief kiss on his outraged brow, 
walked over to her dressing-table. 

An hour later Godfrey was still wide awake, 
suffering from an acute attack of helpless 
indignation. He was incensed to know that 
Marjorie had fallen off to sleep almost as soon 
as her head had touched the pillow. She was 
like that. Once she had made up her mind 
nothing ever troubled her. There was a time 
when she had more or less allowed him to 


205 




A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

make up her mind for her. But not now! She 
even refused to argue with him! He turned 
heavily on his back and screwed his eyes in 
the direction of her bed. He could just make 
out the line of her form curled beneath the 
eiderdown. There wasn’t a great deal of her. 
Impossible to believe that this slight excres¬ 
cence moved and had a glorious being! Im¬ 
possible to believe that, for him, this tiny 
inanimate bundle was the most titanic force 
in nature! He had an uneasy feeling that 
Marjorie, merely through her bland obsti¬ 
nacy, would have her own way; that he would 
shortly find himself living up three flights of 
stairs within two minutes of a bus route; that, 
as the husband of Mrs. Godfrey Jobb, his 
evenings would be dedicated to the entertain¬ 
ment of chattering literary nonentities. . . . 
Chelsea too! Mercifully he dozed off. 

Thump! Thump! Thump! He awoke 
with a start. Thump! Thump! Thump! 
He had heard that sound before. Someone 
was beating wildly at the front door. Thump! 
As if he were the victim of some maniac im¬ 
pulse he leapt from his bed, thrust his feet into 
his slippers and his arms into his dressing- 
gown, and rushed out of the room and down 
the stairs. The chill night air sobered him 
as he flung open the front door; and Mrs. 

206 


GODFREY IN ECLIPSE 


Meadows, who had been leaning against it 
and straightway collapsed into his arms, was 
quite unaware that he had fully intended to 
murder her. 

“ It wasn’t me ’eart this time,” she gasped 
in his ear. “ But I couldn’t ’elp it. I’ve been 
so miserable to see you, sir!” 

And it occurred to Godfrey, as he gently 
laid her out on the floor, that they were in a 
way companions in adversity. 


207 


CHAPTER XI 
CHRISTINA’S QUEST 


M R. FIGGINS entered Leicester Square 
Station and gloomily paid fourpence for 
a ticket to Hampstead. When he was miser¬ 
able he invariably succumbed to violent fits 
of economy and refused to ride in a taxi at his 
own expense; he preferred to mingle with 
the crowd and nurse his grief in the midst of 
that warm humanity. This evening he was 
exceptionally miserable and begrudged even 
the fourpence he paid for his ticket. In the 
best of moods he disliked the idea of having 
to part with his money; and when he was 
feeling his worst he took as much trouble to 
save a shilling as would, in the normal course 
of his financial operations, have brought him 
in a thousand pounds. Even so, he had never 
before cast upon Christina the indignity of 
going out to see her by Underground. It was 
part of the ritual of all his visits to Hamp¬ 
stead that he should travel by taxi, and there¬ 
by have an opportunity of contemplating in 
a state of comparative quietude the peaceful 
delights that were to ensue. But this partic¬ 
ular evening Mr. Figgins was much too 
worried to find solace in mere contemplation. 
For the first time in his life he found himself 
lacking in that self-confidence which was at 


208 


CHRISTINA’S QUEST 


the very foundation of his business success; 
and it was because his need for comfort and 
consolation was so desperate that he had set 
out on this gloomy pilgrimage. 

Christina’s instructions regarding his visits 
to the cottage were perfectly specific, and in 
the past he had loyally adhered to them. 
There were certain set times and occasions 
when, if he chose, he might avail himself of 
the privilege of spending an hour or so in her 
company; but it was well understood that he 
was not to turn up at odd moments and expect 
to find her willing to receive him. Long ago 
she had quite bluntly informed him that she 
would be unable to retain that feeling of 
independence which was the first condition 
of their highly regular relations if she could 
never be certain when he proposed to put in 
an appearance. And Mr. Figgins had to agree 
that the arrangement had worked well. 
Christina had allocated to him a reasonable 
proportion of her time and listened patiently 
to his financial disquisitions; and when she 
had found it necessary to put him off on one 
of his recognised dining nights she had never 
once failed to make the omission good. . Hav¬ 
ing regard to all the facts of the situation he 
had certainly no fault to find with her; and 
it distressed him to know that he was about 

209 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

to break a compact so rigorously observed. 

For Christina was not expecting him this 
evening; he had, in fact, dined with her only 
the night before. Had he not lacked the 
necessary courage he would have rung her up 
beforehand and warned her of his imminent 
arrival. But he wouldn’t have gained any¬ 
thing; he knew that it was Christina’s policy 
to let him see as little of her as possible, and he 
had no good excuse to offer for his sudden 
resolve to make the journey to Hampstead. 
He could easily have invented a story about 
some business tribulation that had wrecked 
his peace of mind and placed him in urgent 
need of her restoring influence; indeed, the 
recent history of Aunt Mary’s Liver Pills, 
truthfully related, would of itself have pro¬ 
vided a sufficiently harrowing narrative. 
But at the moment he was reluctant to 
divulge this secret. Christina never had 
approved his pill exploits, and it now seemed 
unlikely that he would have reason to be 
proud of them. Of course, she would have 
to be told; she had a way of dragging out of 
him the information he least desired to convey 
to her; and he would willingly have faced the 
ordeal had he been quite certain that she was 
still, within the limits of her bond, his loyal 
and faithful Christina. 


210 


CHRISTINA’S QUEST 


It was precisely on this point that Mr. 
Figgins lacked assurance. Although he had 
no evidence whatsoever, he was definitely of 
the opinion that a change had come over 
Christina even within the last fortnight. It 
was not that her attitude towards himself had 
changed; she had continued to preserve all 
the amenities of their friendship and still lis¬ 
tened attentively to all that he had to say to 
her: at least, she gave every appearance of 
doing so. Nevertheless his feeling was that 
some other matter was occupying her mind, 
and occupying it to the utter exclusion of him¬ 
self; and he resented the change. He was 
baffled to know what could be the cause of it. 
A little more than a fortnight ago she had 
paid a visit to the Adelphi; she had announced 
the fact in a casual manner in answer to his 
general inquiry as to what she had been doing 
with herself. He was not permitted to ask 
why she had gone there, and at the time he 
had not attached any importance to her 
remark. But, in retrospect, he was inclined 
to date from that very day the change that 
had come over her. Her mind was bent on 
some project that was entirely dissociated 
from himself; she had lost much of her natural 
gaiety of spirit; she was troubled, distrait, 
and absorbed in her own affairs although she 

211 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

continued to display a polite interest in his. 
In fine, she had suddenly become a woman 
with a purpose in life; and it was this develop¬ 
ment in Christina’s outlook that had proved 
so disconcerting to the adoring Figgins. The 
horrid thought came into his mind that he 
might one day arrive at the cottage and find 
Christina flown! 

But Amy, as usual, was there to open the 
door to him, and after this momentary panic 
he found Amy herself an enormously satisfy¬ 
ing spectacle; she at least was unchanged. 
However, he parted reluctantly with his hat 
and his coat; without them he felt much 
more defenceless, and even began to wonder 
whether he ought not even now to turn back. 
But Amy resolutely led him to the drawing¬ 
room, and before he quite realised where he 
was the door had closed behind him. 

“ Figgy!” 

# She was glad to see him; she had actually 
kissed him on the cheek. . . . Mr. Figgins 
was so taken aback by this unexpectedly joy¬ 
ful reception that he was incapable of appreci¬ 
ating the delight of being kissed by Christina 
on the cheek. She had never done such a 
thing before, and he very quickly realised that 
she was unlikely to do it again. After this 
momentary demonstration she had at once 
212 


CHRISTINA’S QUEST 


resumed her usual manner and sat down in 
her accustomed seat by the fire, leaving him 
more mystified than ever. She was looking 
at him and obviously waiting for him to 
speak; and it only now occurred to him that 
he had, after all, turned up without having 
decided what explanation he was to offer. 

“ Evening, Christina/’ said Mr. Figgins, 
falling back upon the old formula. 

“ Good-evening, Figgy,” murmured Chris¬ 
tina, politely ignoring the inappositeness of 
his remark at this comparatively late mo¬ 
ment; and curled herself into one corner of 
the lounge as if she were prepared to give him 
any amount of time to collect his thoughts. 

But one thought only was uppermost in 
Mr. Figgins’s mind, and it happened to be one 
that he certainly hadn’t courage enough to 
reveal to her. He perceived that she wasn’t 
thinking about him at all, and the knowledge 
hurt him. If she couldn’t regard him favour¬ 
ably, then he would have much preferred that 
she should regard him unfavourably, because 
he could always hope to discover some means 
of ingratiating himself with her; but that he 
should suddenly have become null in her 
sight filled him with despair. She had lost 
all interest in him; he no longer mattered to 
her, although she might keep up the pretence 

213 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


of that kindly little smile. And yet she had 
appeared to be glad to see him. . . . Mr. Fig- 
gins began to tug at his collar in the agony 
of the moment; he was overwhelmed by the 
uncertainties and the anxieties and the com¬ 
plexities of life, or so much of it as centred 
around Christina. At last she took pity on 
him. 

“ Tired, Figgy?” she asked him, still keep¬ 
ing to the usual formula. 

“ No/’ said Mr. Figgins, with a surprising 
abruptness; and then added, rather shame¬ 
facedly, as if he were afraid to forego his one 
little joke: “ Not when I see you, my dear.” 

Christina smiled evanescently, and sighed. 

“ Had a good day?” 

“ No, a bad day,” growled Mr. Figgins, and 
drew his large white hand across his fore¬ 
head. It was the first time that he had ever 
confessed to her, without any sort of qualifi¬ 
cation, that he had had a really bad day, and 
she looked up at him attentively. 

“And what’s wrong?” 

“ Everything’s wrong,” replied Mr. Figgins 
with a throaty emphasis. “Everything.” 

“ Me too?” murmured Christina. 

“ No.” 

Mr. Figgins had paused a fraction of a 
second before replying, and the look that 
214 


CHRISTINA’S QUEST 


crept into Christina’s eyes so intimidated him 
that he blurted out with a dramatic fervour: 

“No! ...Pills!” 

“ Then it’s only Aunt Mary that’s gone 
wrong?” suggested Christina. 

“Only!” gasped Mr. Figgins in shocked 
indignation. “ Only!” He halted for a 
terrific intake of breath. “ Do you know,” he 
went on with a passionate intensity of accent, 
“that we’ve backed Aunt Mary to the amount 
of nearly one hundred and fifty thousand 
pounds-” 

“ How much of it was your own money?” 
interrupted Christina. 

“ That’s not the point at all,” protested Mr. 
Figgins. “ You must understand, my dear, 
that I am responsible to America.” And he 
placed a large white hand over his chest. 

“ But you won’t lose anything, Figgy, will 
you?” 

“ I shall if I’m not careful.” Mr. Figgins 
drew his chair a little closer and solemnly 
tapped her on the knee. “ There’s my repu¬ 
tation to consider. It was on my advice that 
the Chemical Corporation of America put this 
money up-” 

“ In the belief that there was money in 
pills” The slight scorn in her voice was 
entirely lost on Mr. Figgins. 


215 




A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

“ Just so,” said Mr. Figgins, but in a tone 
that lacked something of its earlier convic¬ 
tion. 

“ Then what’s happened?” 

“ Nothing’s happened,” mournfully an¬ 
nounced Mr. Figgins. “ That’s the whole 
trouble. We’ve given the public Napoleon 
and Byron; we’ve given them Antony and 
Cleopatra; we’ve given them Nero and-” 

“ Then what are you going to give them?” 
asked Christina, cutting short this enumera¬ 
tion of historical personages whose liver 
troubles in relation to Aunt Mary’s Pills had 
been conspicuous in the public Press for 
weeks past. 

“ Testimonials,” said Mr. Figgins. “ We’ve 
got together a wonderful collection of them.” 
He leaned forward and whispered with a con¬ 
spiratorial air: 

“ When you read them you’ll never believe 
that there’s absolutely nothing in the pills 

except-” He broke off with a nervous 

little laugh; the look of disapproval in Chris¬ 
tina’s eye had suddenly chilled him. “ You 
always were prejudiced against my pill busi¬ 
ness.” 

“ You never told me that you were getting 
these wonderful testimonials,” said Christina, 
disregarding the accusation. 

216 




CHRISTINA’S QUEST 


“ They didn’t arrive until this morning,” 
meekly replied Mr. Figgins. “ I got a clever 
fellow to do a bunch of them. We shall set 
about getting some good names at once.” 

“ For what?” 

Mr. Figgins opened his eyes wide and re¬ 
garded her intently. She had put the ques¬ 
tion so simply that he found himself wonder¬ 
ing whether indeed she had suddenly been 
endowed with a beautiful innocence of mind. 

“ What do we want them for?” snapped 
Mr. Figgins, quite forgetting for the moment 
that he was addressing earth’s fairest crea¬ 
ture. “ To attach to the testimonials, of 
course.” 

“ I call that dishonest,” commented Chris¬ 
tina. 

“ I call it just business—that is, the pill 
business,” said Mr. Figgins defiantly. He 
was beginning to feel better now that he had 
plunged into the details of his immense busi¬ 
ness activities. “The public want pills; 
they insist on having them; they wouldn’t be 
happy without them; and if I don’t supply 
them, someone else will.” Mr. Figgins 
clenched his large white hand and shook it 
vehemently in face of the world. “ The 
public don’t want to know what’s inside 
them; they only want to have faith in them; 

217 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

and it’s up to me, through my advertising, to 
give them that faith.” Mr. Figgins brought 
his fist down on the arm of his chair with a 
terrific thump. 

“ So really you’re a public benefactor, 
Figgy?” murmured Christina, slowly and 
wearily uncurling herself. 

“ I wouldn’t go so far as that, my dear,” 
replied Mr. Figgins, though he hardly looked 
as if he meant what he said. He blew out his 
cheeks; he was a little breathless after this 
performance; it wasn’t often that Christina 
gave him the opportunity of laying down the 
law for three consecutive sentences. 

“ Therefore,” concluded Mr. Figgins, 
“when the public pay me three shillings for a 
penny box of pills they don’t buy pills; they 
buy faith—and it’s dirt cheap at the price.” 
He gave a triumphant snort. 

“ I hope poor Mr. Jobb understands all 
this,” murmured Christina. “I shouldn’t feel 
so sorry for him if I thought he did.” 

This wasn’t the first time that Christina 
had commiserated poor Mr. Jobb, and to-day 
this mention of his rival incensed Mr. Figgins 
more than usual. 

“ If I’d had that young man’s opportuni¬ 
ties-” he began. 

“ But how is he doing now?” 


218 



CHRISTINA’S QUEST 


The question was addressed to him with 
such a quiet insistence that Mr. Figgins could 
have sworn that there was a hidden motive 
behind it. He looked at her darkly. 

“ Do you think he is making a lot of 
money? ” 

“ I don’t know,” said Mr. Figgins despond¬ 
ently. “ I’d give a great deal to find out for 
certain.” 

“ Perhaps,” suggested Christina, “all this 
talk about Napoleon and Byron and Antony 
and Cleopatra, and the rest of them, has put 
the public right off pills?” 

“ Nothing will put the public off pills,” 
roundly declared the mystified Figgins; he 
never had been able to fathom Christina’s 
interest in this young man Jobb. “Besides, 
if they weren’t gobbling up pills, they’d be 
gobbling up some other form of remedy; and 
it would be my business, as a patent medicine 
manufacturer, to find out what it was they 
wanted to gobble up.” 

“ I think it’s all too dreadful, Figgy dear,” 
said Christina, standing over him and making 
an imaginary bad mark on the bald dome of 
his head. 

“ It isn’t, Christina. It’s human nature— 
and advertising; the weakness of human 
nature—and the power of advertising.” And 

219 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

Mr. Figgins sighed; he felt that he needed a 
rest; he was even embarrassed by Christina’s 
proximity; she never stood over him in this 
fashion unless she intended to make him do 
something that was altogether against his 
inclination. 

“ Figgy?” 

“ Yes, my dear?” responded Mr. Figgins in 
miserable resignation. 

“ Will you take me up West?” 

Mr. Figgins jumped to his feet with as 
much agility as his great weight allowed. He 
was surprised, pleased, and yet more mysti¬ 
fied; he had quite made up his mind that she 
was preparing to bundle him out of the house. 

“ But where?” he stammered. 

“ Oh, just everywhere,” lightly replied 
Christina as she left the room. 

Mr. Figgins sat down on the lounge she had 
lately occupied. It was his proud boast that 
there wasn’t a business move on earth he 
couldn’t forecast where his own commercial 
interests were concerned; but he had to con¬ 
fess that Christina’s moves and motives tran¬ 
scended the limits of human speculation; at 
every turn she baffled him. His eyes veered 
in the direction of the door through which 
she had passed, and as despairingly turned 
away. A pile of illustrated papers lay on the 
220 


CHRISTINA’S QUEST 


seat beside him, and he took one of them up; 
then another, and another.... They were all 
of them opened at one particular page, and 
each of these pages contained a photograph 
of a group of which Mrs. Godfrey Jobb was 
a member. Mr. Figgins cynically observed 
that Mr. Godfrey Jobb had now disappeared 
from the scene; not even a corner had been 
found for him, and apparently he had not 
been in attendance at these various functions 
when the pictures were taken. Mrs. Godfrey 
Jobb’s association with Jobb’s Hepatic Pilules, 
Ltd., had never been publicly stated and 
Mr. Figgins was of the opinion that herein 
Mr. Jobb again betrayed his business inca¬ 
pacity. Had there been a Mrs. Figgins whose 
name counted for something in the great 
world, her husband would have taken steps 
to ensure that it should be put to some good 
use. . . . Mr. Figgins sighed as he noted 
the unvarying charm of Mrs. Godfrey Jobb’s 
unfailing smile in all these photographs: there 
never had been, and never would be, a Mrs. 
Figgins of equal charm and celebrity. 

He then began to examine the groups in 
some detail; it occurred to him that they 
might contain the clue to the recent develop¬ 
ments in Christina’s attitude towards him¬ 
self. Although for some time past she had 

221 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

displayed an unaccountable interest in the 
business fortunes of poor Mr. Jobb, he 
couldn’t imagine why she should take the 
trouble to gather together this pictorial rec¬ 
ord of his wife’s activities. He glanced 
through the list of names beneath each photo¬ 
graph, and compared one with the other. All 
the names were distinguished, and no two 
lists were alike, but every one of them con¬ 
cluded with the words, “and friend.” Mr. 
Figgins perched his pince-nez on the point of 
his nose, and scowled at the features of this 
gentleman. As he anticipated, it was the 
same “friend” every time. He removed the 
pince-nez from his nose and became suddenly 
thoughtful. This young man looked as if he 
might be an attractive person; he was obvi¬ 
ously in close touch with the Jobbs. Could 
it be that Christina . .. He did not hear the 
door open. 

“ You ready, Figgy?” 

“ Yes,” said Mr. Figgins but without at¬ 
tempting to rise from his seat, as she walked 
towards him. He had ranged the photo¬ 
graphs in a row, and she leaned over the back 
of the lounge and looked at him inquiringly. 

“ Who is this young man?” Mr. Figgins 
planted a fat finger on the offending features. 

“ He is a Mr. Randal Frere,” replied 


222 


CHRISTINA’S QUEST 


Christina without even a moment’s hesitation. 

He didn’t know whether to be relieved or 
annoyed that she shouldn’t have troubled to 
conceal her knowledge. 

“ Who is he?” 

“ Mrs. Godfrey Jobb’s Press agent: the 
man who has made her what she is, you 
know.” 

“ Do you know him?” Mr. Figgins 
drawled out the question in a hushed voice 
as if it were his intention to instil into this 
imperturbable young woman a proper respect 
for his cross-examination. On occasions 
Christina could be so unblushingly truthful 
that he had to resent the implication that his 
feelings were of such small concern to her that 
she wouldn’t even attempt to prevaricate. 

“ Do I know him?” murmured Christina, 
beaming on him with one of her kindly little 
smiles. “ I do—very well indeed.” 

“ And how long is it since you saw him?” 
Mr. Figgins was breaking all the rules of their 
relationship; but was too distraught to care. 

“ Not for months and months and months!” 
chanted Christina. “And how dare you, dear 
Figgy, ask me so many questions! However,” 
she added more quietly, “ I’ll let;you off this 
time, because you’re going to help me to find 
him to-night.” 


223 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

“ So that’s why you were glad to see me!” 
fumed the frenzied Figgins. “ I refuse to do 
anything of the kind! There’s a limit, Chris¬ 
tina, to what I’m prepared to put up with 
from you. I’ll bring this place down like a 
pack of cards if-” 

“ Taxi’s waiting, sir,” announced Amy at 
the door. 

“ Come on,” said Christina; and Mr. Fig- 
gins followed her, and meekly accepted the 
hat and the coat that Amy held out to him. 

Meanwhile the object of this search was 
despondently seated in a small bedroom of a 
third-floor flat in Chelsea, within two minutes 
of the nearest bus route. The husband of 
Christina, having retired to bed at an unprec¬ 
edentedly early hour, was keeping himself 
warm in front of the gas fire and wearing a 
pair of the famous silk pyjamas; he was also 
wondering how much longer he would be per¬ 
mitted to enjoy either of these luxuries. 

Ever since the move to town, life had been 
one long diversion. Godfrey, once the move 
had been accomplished, had remained in the 
background as much as possible; he was as 
inconspicuous a husband as any lover could 
desire. For Randal could no longer doubt 
that he was in love with the charming and the 
224 



CHRISTINA’S QUEST 


celebrated Mrs. Godfrey Jobb; his only cause 
for surprise was that he should ever have 
imagined himself in love with the once divine 
Christina. Christina had always eluded him; 
she had tantalised him into the belief that he 
adored her; and she had liked him only for 
what she could get out of him. She had mar¬ 
ried him, of course; but he was convinced now 
that she had done so only because the idea of 
marriage had rather appealed to her at the 
moment, in much the same way that she might 
have taken a fancy to a new hat or a different 
perfume. Besides, in the folly of that deliri¬ 
ous episode he had allowed her to believe 
that he was in possession of a considerable in¬ 
come. He had never blamed her for clearing 
off; and had she not done so he might never 
have met Marjorie and known what it was to 
be really in love. He had never made love 
to her; he had been content to allow an agree¬ 
able state of tension to exist between them; 
at the perfect moment their mutual barrier of 
reserve would break down, and he would hold 
her trembling body in his arms.... Through¬ 
out Randal had been guileless of any strata¬ 
gem to secure this realisation of his dreams; 
it was merely that events had seemed to move 
of their own accord to this inevitable end. 
And now an unexpected calamity had over- 

225 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

taken him, in the shape of a letter from 
Christina; it represented a complication in 
his personal affairs that considerably de¬ 
tracted from the pleasurable uncertainty that 
had hitherto surrounded them. 

The letter lay on his knee, and he had been 
looking at it for the last half-hour. So far as 
he knew Christina had never in her life writ¬ 
ten a long letter, and when she was in an 
angry mood she had an unhappy facility for 
getting down to the point in about three lines. 
The note before him was brief enough, and 
ran: “I think it’s too disgusting of you to carry 
on as you are now doing with that dreadful 
woman. You will please come and see me to¬ 
morrow afternoon.—Your loving Christina.— 
P.S. Where’s all the money coming from? 

—P.P.S. If you don’t come-!” The 

address was a cottage at Hampstead. 

Immediately on receiving this communica¬ 
tion Randal had blasphemously dismissed it 
from his mind; it was typical of Christina to 
interfere where she wasn’t wanted, and he 
felt that he was now in a position to disregard 
any attempt she might make to get in touch 
with him again. The last thing in the world 
he desired was a resumption of their old rela¬ 
tions. Why she should have sent the note at 
all was more than he could understand; he 
226 



CHRISTINA’S QUEST 


could only assume that it was her confounded 
woman’s curiosity; or it might be that she 
was annoyed with him for having fallen on his 
feet at last. Over and over again she had told 
him that his wretched little paragraphs would 
never get him anywhere; and it had so hap¬ 
pened that they had brought him into contact 
with one of the most charming celebrities of 
the day. Such a development was unlikely 
to meet with Christina’s approval. 

He had spent the morning with Marjorie, 
going through her correspondence, and Mar¬ 
jorie had effectually extinguished any linger¬ 
ing thought of Christina from his mind. In 
the afternoon she had gone out shopping, and 
it was then that he had succumbed to a riot 
of uneasy speculation. He found that, in 
Marjorie’s absence, Christina seemed extraor¬ 
dinarily near; it was positively uncanny. He 
roamed from one room to another, expect¬ 
ing to come up against her at every corner; 
the note he carried in his pocket was as living 
to him as the touch of her hand. “ You will 
please come . . . and if you don’t come . . . 
your loving Christina.” The phrases ran 
through his head interminably. Your loving 
Christina! The trouble was that she might 
so easily mean it; she was the world’s most 
unaccountable woman, and, as he well knew, 

227 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


determined and implacable. He could see her 
stabbing these few phrases on a sheet of note- 
paper and sealing the envelope with an enor¬ 
mous pressure of her small hand; and there 
would be a glint in her eye which showed that 
she meant every word she had written. . . . 

“ P.P.S. If you don’t come-!” Randal 

huddled over the fire in the deserted drawing¬ 
room, and shuddered. If she had made up 
her mind to run him to earth, she would; she 
would set out on a search for him that would 
only conclude with his ignominious capture 
and arrest. What could the woman want? 
Money? He didn’t think so. If the quality 
of her notepaper and the address on it were 
anything to go by she appeared to be living 
out at Hampstead in a state of luxury and 
opulence. This didn’t surprise him. Chris¬ 
tina was not the sort of girl who would want 
for anything for long; as he had so often had 
occasion to note during the six months he had 
lived with her, she was one of those fortunate 
people who have only to ask that they may 
receive. ... He grew more and more dis¬ 
traught as he found himself reviewing this 
past history, with Marjorie all the while 
receding into the background. By half-past 
five he was definitely of the opinion that he 
had been a fool not to obey the command con- 
228 



CHRISTINA’S QUEST 

veyed in her letter; by half-past six he was 
equally convinced that it would be madness 
on his part to show his face in public until he 
had made his peace with her. He shuddered 
again to think of a meeting between Mrs. 
Randal Frere and Mrs. Godfrey Jobb; it 
seemed to him that the two of them would 
just about finish him off. . . . He took up 
a piece of notepaper, and wrote: “ Dear 
Christina. ” It was as far as he could get, 
and Marjorie, when she returned home, her¬ 
self suggested that he had better not venture 
out that evening; he looked thoroughly ill. 

Randal jumped to his feet; he had dozed 
off under the influence of the warmth from 
the gas fire. It had gone twelve and it was 
an insistent knocking on the door that had 
aroused him. His mind was instantly alert; 
he knew that it must be Marjorie; he felt that 
something had happened. Another calamity! 

He flung the door open. Marjorie was 
standing outside with one hand clutching her 
gown round her throat; her eyes were wild 
and frightened. 

“ Randal, Godfrey’s gone!” 

a What do you mean, gone?” 

She pushed a scrap of paper into his hand. 

“ I found it on my dressing-table,” she 
gasped. 


229 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

Randal held the note up to the light and 
read: “ Have gone into the country for a few 
days. Don’t trouble about me. Love.— 
Godfrey.” 

“ It means this,” he murmured, taking her 
into his arms, and kissed her. 

She was terribly weak in his arms, and 
utterly unresponsive; and he bitterly realised 
that the kiss he had given her was one of 
consolation rather than love. 


230 


CHAPTER XII 

MORNING IN DUKE STREET 


IV/TRS. CUSHION flicked the dust off the 
mantelshelf with a sullen ferocity. For 
weeks past, Sundays excepted, she had never 
once missed paying her daily visit to the flat 
in Duke Street, and never once had she suc¬ 
ceeded in catching Mr. Randal Frere inside it. 
Mrs. Cushion was an exasperated, disap¬ 
pointed woman; her curiosity regarding Mr. 
Randal Frere’s recent activities had taken 
such possession of her mind that she was very 
nearly incapable of attending to the ordinary 
routine of her working existence. She paid 
these daily visits of her own accord. Mr. 
Frere’s instructions were that she should look 
in once or twice a week and occasionally light 
a fire; and her remuneration for these small 
services was double what it had been when 
she had put in a certain amount of real hard 
work. Mrs. Cushion couldn’t understand it 
at all. Apparently he still had plenty of 
money to throw away; but the flat was no 
longer good enough for him, now that he was 
living in town again. She was quite certain 
that he had returned, for a few weeks back he 
had sent her a note to say that no more letters 
were to be forwarded to his address in the 
country, and that he would call at Duke 

231 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

Street to pick up his correspondence from 
time to time. And he had called, two and 
three times a week, but never once when she 
had happened to be there, although she had 
turned up at all hours of the day. Mrs. 
Cushion was a balked and resentful woman; 
never in all her experience had she been 
placed in such an ignominious position. If 
there was one thing in life that Mrs. Cushion 
would neither countenance nor tolerate it was 
ignorance of other people’s affairs. 

Mrs. Cushion flicked the dust off three let¬ 
ters on the mantelshelf: three only, and most 
uninteresting they looked. It was sufficiently 
obvious that Mr. Frere was having his corre¬ 
spondence addressed elsewhere, so that she 
was deprived of any possible clue that this 
might have afforded. She particularly wanted 
to know if any letter had been forthcoming 
from the young woman whose visit to the flat 
had provided one of the major sensations of a 
lifetime. This so-called Mrs. Randal Frere 
was the only woman in the world who had 
ever got the better of Mrs. Cushion in any 
verbal argument, and ever since that one¬ 
sided affray Mrs. Cushion had spent a great 
deal of thought in composing devastating 
rejoinders to her imperturbable antagonist. 
Mrs. Cushion’s own description of her was 

232 


MORNING IN DUKE STREET 


rather briefer and much more pointed, and 
one that no amount of provocation would 
have induced her to use to her face. For she 
respected Christina. In her estimation there 
were only two classes of women: those who 
were ladies, and those who most emphatically 
were not; and as soon as she had set eyes 
on Christina she had decided that, whatever 
else she might be, she certainly came within 
her definition of a lady. She did not approve 
of this Mrs. Randal Frere; but she was pre¬ 
cluded from answering her back, because she 
was a lady; and Mrs. Cushion, who certainly 
knew how to answer back a member of her 
own class, felt that she laboured under a very 
considerable disadvantage. However, she 
was quite prepared to wait for an opportunity 
to settle her account with this surprising 
young woman. 

She sat down at the table and dragged 
towards her a half-sheet of notepaper on 
which Mr. Frere had written his latest in¬ 
structions. They had arrived only that morn¬ 
ing, and the envelope was marked “ Urgent.” 
“ Dear Mrs. Cushion,” the letter ran, “ should 
anyone—particularly a lady—call at the flat 
when you happen to be about and inquire for 
me, please make it perfectly clear that I am 
out of town, and shall be for some time to 

233 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


come. You can add that I am not at all well 
and quite unable to attend to any correspond¬ 
ence. Please hold everything until I return. 
Yours truly, R. F.” 

Mrs. Cushion had subjected this statement 
to a very keen examination, with the result 
that she didn’t believe a word of it. Mr. 
Frere had never been ill for as long as she had 
known him; he wasn’t the sort that did fall 
ill; and if he were ill, that was no reason why 
he should be afraid to leave an address behind 
him. She sniffed at the remark that he was 
unable to attend to his correspondence: three 
letters in a fortnight did not represent the 
sum-total of that correspondence, and the 
greater part of it was obviously going else¬ 
where. He was in hiding, was Mr. Randal 
Frere; and who should he be hiding from but 
that young woman who tried to pass herself 
off as his wife? Mrs. Cushion was unable to 
decide whether this move on his part sub¬ 
stantiated her claims or whether it did not. 
Alternatively it might be the other woman 
who was on his track; or both of them. . . . 
Mrs. Cushion thrust her several chins into the 
palm of her hand and gloomily reviewed the 
dolorous possibilities of that situation in 
which her bachelor charge had landed him¬ 
self. She began to sentimentalise over him, 
234 


MORNING IN DUKE STREET 


and his past; she was quite sure that before 
he had got mixed up with these dreadful 
women his life had been free of any stain or 
deceit. She turned over in her hand the 
pound note that he had enclosed in his last 
letter: the wages of sin, she thought to her¬ 
self; though what wage and whose sin she 
did not pause to consider: the phrase had 
slipped into her mind, and there it would 
stick, for its own sake if for no other reason. 
Such was the dejection of her mood that she 
even asked herself whether indeed she ought 
to accept any more of this tainted money. . . . 

“ Good-morning, Mrs. Cushion.” 

Mrs. Cushion jumped to her feet; she had 
been plunged in such emotional depths that 
she had not heard the door open, and Chris¬ 
tina was almost on top of her before she could 
regain her equanimity. She took refuge in 
mere politeness. 

“ Good-morning, miss.” 

“ Madam,” corrected Christina. “ You 
might as well get it right to begin with, be¬ 
cause we’re likely to see quite a lot of each 
other in the future.” 

She sat down on the combination lounge- 
bed and cast her eyes round the room as if she 
were thinking in terms of feet and inches. 

“ That must go,” she remarked musingly, 

235 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

pointing with her exiguous foot at a hideous 
little side-table with four legs, one of which 
was partially disabled. “ And the carpet!” 

“ If you’ll excuse me-” 

Mrs. Cushion choked at the thought of hav¬ 
ing to come out with the word madam; she 
never would believe—not until she knew— 
that this airy expensive-looking creature was 
the wife of Mr. Randal Frere. 

“ Oh, I’m so sorry,” burst out Christina. 
“ Of course, I ought to have explained. But 
first, when do you think Mr. Frere will be in?” 

“ He won’t,” sullenly replied the faithful 
Mrs. Cushion. “ He’s gone into the country 
without leaving an address, and I don’t know 
when he will be back, and he’s ill.” 

“ Quite a little recitation, Mrs. Cushion,” 
murmured Christina. “ You’re quite sure that 
you haven’t made a mistake? I rather think 
that I caught sight of my husband last night.” 

This was quite inaccurate. Christina in¬ 
deed, as Mr. Figgins would remember to his 
dying day, had spent nearly three hours the 
previous evening chasing around the West 
End in search of Mr. Randal Frere, without 
getting a glimpse of so much as his coat-tail. 

“ You might have done,” replied Mrs. 
Cushion. “ I didn’t get his letter until this 
morning.” 

236 



MORNING IN DUKE STREET 


“ Ah, a letter!” Christina smiled with her 
lips and her eyes and her cheeks and her firm 
little chin; her whole body beamed on Mrs. 
Cushion. “ And where was it written from?” 

“ It wasn’t written from nowhere,” mut¬ 
tered Mrs. Cushion, freezing under that too 
gracious smile. “ Just London, I suppose.” 

“ I quite understand, thank you,” said 
Christina, with a dangerous emphasis. “ How¬ 
ever, it doesn’t matter very much. I can 
wait for him. By the way, was there anything 
about me in that letter?” 

Christina fired off the question so rapidly 
that Mrs. Cushion gave a tiny little gasp. 

“ He’s never breathed a word about you to 
me in all his life!” She made this statement 
in a tone that implied that she was prepared 
to take her Bible oath on it. 

“ Oh, well,” sighed Christina, “ I’m not 
surprised. It’s so easy for a busy man to 
forget that he has a wife at all when she’s 
not there to remind him of the fact. And by 
the way, Mrs. Cushion, where’s the key of 
this fiat?” 

Christina’s habit of glancing off one remark 
into another disconcerted Mrs. Cushion; she 
never knew what was coming next, at a time 
too when she required to have all her wits 
about her. 


237 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

“ Where is the key?” 

“ I’ve got it,” admitted Mrs. Cushion. 
“ And Mr. Frere told me-” 

“ I consider myself equally competent with 
Mr. Frere to issue orders; and will you kindly 
give me that key now!” 

Christina had raised her voice a few tones, 
and Mrs. Cushion realised at once that she 
would either have to fight with a total disre¬ 
gard for what she considered to be the pro¬ 
prieties of her position, or henceforth for ever 
be under the thumb of this domineering young 
woman. 

“ I won’t,” said Mrs. Cushion with a scowl 
and a grunt. “ Not till I get my orders where 
they came from!” 

“ Very well,” murmured Christina. “ I can 
wait. I don’t think you quite understand that 
I propose to live here until my husband re¬ 
turns. I have an idea that he won’t be so long 
as you appear to believe; and I’m desperately 
anxious not to miss him.” 

Christina made this last remark with ex¬ 
ceeding urbanity; but Mrs. Cushion had an 
uneasy feeling that she ought to move heaven 
and earth to warn Mr. Frere what fate had in 
store for him. . . . Her lips trembled; but 
not a word could she get out; she had again 
been petrified by this wisp of a girl. 

238 



MORNING IN DUKE STREET 


“ Perhaps,” suggested Christina, “ you’d 
like to be getting on with your saucepans. 
I’m sure they must take a lot to keep clean.” 

Mrs. Cushion crushed her hands against 
her breast in an endeavour to stimulate her¬ 
self into some vocal outburst, and then 
despairingly turned on her heel and stalked 
into the kitchen-scullery. A few seconds later 
Christina heard a raging clangour among the 
saucepans. 

“ Good-morning!” 

It was Christina’s turn to be surprised; she 
had been so busy with her own thoughts that 
she had not heard a knock at the door. The 
voice was strange to her, but she recognised 
the man. It was Mr. Godfrey Jobb; she 
remembered him from a photograph that had 
many times appeared beneath his wife’s, in 
the early days of her rise to fame. 

“ Good-moming,” repeated Godfrey. “ I 
expected to find Mr. Randal Frere here.” 

Actually Godfrey expected nothing of the 
kind; he had every reason to suppose that Mr. 
Randal Frere, at that particular moment, was 
talking over with Marjorie the new situation 
that had arisen as a result of his flight from 
the flat in Chelsea. Nor had he any desire to 
encounter this young man until he was in 
possession of more information concerning his 

239 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

activities; and it was for this purpose that he 
had come along to the Adelphi, having dis¬ 
covered Randal's Duke Street address from 
his redirected correspondence. 

“ Good-morning — Mr. Godfrey Jobb, I 
think?" 

Christina smiled, rose, held out her hand, 
lingeringly. . . . Godfrey, somewhat discon¬ 
certed by this immediate confession of his 
identity, cautiously accepted it; he was in the 
enemy’s camp, and he could not understand 
why his reception should have been so ex¬ 
tremely friendly. Christina relapsed into her 
corner of the lounge. 

“ Won’t you sit down, Mr. Jobb? No, 
here,’’ she added, pointing to the seat in the 
corner opposite her own. “ This is the only 
comfortable spot in the room.’’ 

“ Thank you,’’ muttered Godfrey in meek 
compliance. “ Perhaps you know Mr. Frere 
rather well?’’ 

“ Indeed I do,’’ said Christina, with a toss 
of her head. “ Years and years and years.’’ 

“Impossible!’’ murmured Godfrey, with a 
gallantry that surprised himself; the gaiety 
of her voice and the charm of her manner had 
already served to obscure the purpose of his 
errand. Christina, however, ignored the im¬ 
plied compliment. 

240 


MORNING IN DUKE STREET 


“ I understand,” she said, “ that Mr. Frere 
has gone into the country. Apparently he’s 
ill, and doesn’t want to be disturbed.” 

“ Really!” growled Godfrey, with a satirical 
emphasis. 

“ No, I don’t believe it either.” 

Godfrey glanced at her alertly. In making 
this remark she had done something more 
than take him into her confidence; she had 
allied herself with him in his particular quest; 
she had suddenly become his fellow-conspira¬ 
tor. He crossed and recrossed his legs in the 
acuteness of his embarrassment. 

“ Perhaps you’ll tell me who—why-” 

he began, and broke off miserably. 

“ Oh, that’s easily answered,” said Chris¬ 
tina lightly. “ I ought to know. I happen 
to be his wife.” 

“ You are Mrs. Randal Frere! I never 
knew-” 

Godfrey made no effort to conceal his 
astonishment. 

“It’s quite true, my dear Mr. Jobb.” 
Christina examined her pretty hands as if she 
had never seen them before, then looked at 
him out of the corner of her eye. “ Only he’s 
not in the habit of telling people about me.” 

“ Look here,” said Godfrey, a little roughly. 
“ How much do you know?” 


241 




A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

“ Nearly everything.” 

“ But my wife!” cried Godfrey. 

Christina did her best to look sad, and 
sighed, and murmured: 

“ Yes. . . . And I’m sorry, my dear Mr. 
Jobb.” 

Godfrey got up from his seat on the 
lounge; he was beginning to find her rather 
overpowering; he leaned heavily against the 
mantelshelf. 

“ This is awful!” he gasped. 

“ But why?” asked Christina with the hap¬ 
piest of smiles. “ Don’t you understand that 
I am just as anxious to get hold of him as 
you are to be rid of him? Can’t we help each 
other?” 

The warm appeal of her voice made God¬ 
frey feel weak all over; never in his life had 
he come up against anyone quite like Chris¬ 
tina; she had only to ask to be obeyed. 

“ I don’t see how we can,” groaned God¬ 
frey, not daring to look at her. He even 
found himself wishing that he had never come 
near the flat that morning; he foresaw that 
any course of action he might take would not 
be dictated by himself, but by the wife of the 
man who was the primary and the continu¬ 
ing cause of his domestic disruption. His 
astonishment that the man had a wife at all 
242 


MORNING IN DUKE STREET 


had been submerged by this latest develop¬ 
ment in his relations with that wife. . . . 
Godfrey asked himself despairingly where it 
would all end, and left Christina to take 
charge of him. 

“ I hate this room,” she said. “ A man 
has no idea how to make himself comfortable 
without a woman to look after him. You 
won’t be able to recognise the place after a 
day or two.” 

Godfrey slowly turned his head towards 
her. 

“ I mean,” continued Christina, “ that I 
intend to stay here until Randal chooses to 

turn up; and then-” She shrugged her 

shoulders. “ I don’t think your wife will see 
very much more of him after that!” 

“ Meanwhile,” began Godfrey, “ you-” 

“ You are going to take me out to lunch,” 
broke in Christina with a cheerful finality. 
“ We must talk things over; there’s a great 
deal I’d like to know. Mrs. Cushion!” 

Godfrey could not have started more vio¬ 
lently had she called up the devil himself. 
The clangour from the saucepans in the 
kitchen had ceased immediately on his arrival, 
and he was quite unaware that one eager eye 
behind the kitchen-scullery door had been 
fixed on him for the greater part of the inter- 

243 




A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


view. Mrs. Cushion, in fact, had passed the 
ten most entrancing minutes of her life; never 
before had she found herself on the threshold 
of such a promising mystery. Christina had 
no need to call her a second time; she 
appeared from behind the door with a shame¬ 
less alacrity. 

“ Mrs. Cushion!” 

“ Yes, ’m.” 

At this juncture Mrs. Cushion was taking 
no risks; it seemed more than likely that this 
young woman was to be her new mistress. 

“ You’ll be gone by the time I get back. 
Please let me have that key now.” 

A gleam of defiance crept into Mrs. Cush¬ 
ion’s eyes; it had not occurred to her that she 
had been called into the room for the purpose 
of delivering up this the last emblem of her 
authority. Christina affected not to notice 
her rebellious demeanour. She rose. 

“ Shall we get along, Mr. Jobb?” 

“ Certainly, Mrs. Frere.” 

Mrs. Cushion transferred her gaze to God¬ 
frey; she was impressed by his ready acquies¬ 
cence and the mode of his address; he had 
granted the woman her married title with a 
naturalness that disarmed suspicion. She 
searched among the folds of her many gar¬ 
ments and produced the key. 

244 


MORNING IN DUKE STREET 


“ Thank you,” said Christina, daintily 
inserting it in her hand-bag. “ Of course I 
shall be bringing along some of my own 
things, and I may have to make some different 
arrangements here; but I hope to be able to 
keep you, Mrs. Cushion. I’m sure that you’ve 
always looked after my husband—beauti¬ 
fully.” And with this lingering adverb on 
her alluring lips led Godfrey out of the room. 

Mrs. Cushion gulped, and flopped down on 
the combination lounge-bed with such force 
that the mechanism sprang into life and pre¬ 
cipitated her on to the floor. Over and over 
again Mr. Frere had warned her never to take 
liberties with this highly patented contriv¬ 
ance; speaking from his own experience he 
had assured her that it demanded the most 
careful handling; and she now had to agree 
with him. To raise her aching limbs to the 
vertical required a considerable effort, and for 
several minutes she lay where she had fallen, 
in a posture of comparative ease. When the 
third visitor of the morning, after a perfunc¬ 
tory knock on the door, walked into the room, 
she was still sprawling on the floor, resentfully 
regarding the engine of her downfall. 

“ Good heavens!” cried Mr. Figgins. 
“ What’s the matter, woman?” 

“ Go away!” shrieked Mrs. Cushion, feel- 

245 


* COMEDY OF WOMEN 

ing that she had had quite enough visitors 
for one morning, and slowly dragged herself 
to her feet. 

But Mr. Figgins was not to be so easily 
put off. He had gone to enormous trouble in 
order to discover Mr. Randal Frere’s address, 
and after last night’s episode he was deter¬ 
mined to find out all that there was to be 
known about this mysterious young man in 
whom Christina so violently—and so labori¬ 
ously—interested herself. Mr. Figgins still 
ached, in body and in soul, at the memory of 
that unaccountable evening. He had no very 
clear idea of what he was going to say to this 
Mr. Randal Frere if he did manage to get 
hold of him; but he had already made up his 
mind to open the conversation by bellowing 
forth, “ Who are you?” The words, in fact, 
had been on the tip of his tongue when he had 
flung himself through the door. 

“ You’re drunk,” said Mr. Figgins, making 
no attempt to conceal his aversion for the 
unseemly spectacle she presented. 

“ Drunk! ” snarled Mrs. Cushion wrath- 
fully. Whatever sins critical neighbours had 
laid at her door, drunkenness was not one of 
them. She folded her arms and gazed at him 
so fiercely that Mr. Figgins was grateful that 
the table was interposed between them. 

246 


MORNING IN DUKE STREET 


“ If you’re in the habit of rolling about the 
floor at half-past twelve in the morning, then, 
my good woman-” 

“ I’m not your good woman,” snapped 
Mrs. Cushion. She wasn’t in the least afraid 
to argue with this fat old man with his large 
white hands; she had sized him up immedi¬ 
ately; he wasn’t a gentleman within her 
meaning of the term. A gentleman would 
have behaved quite differently; he would 
either have been extremely solicitous or 
politely contemptuous. 

“ Who are you, anyway?” she growled 
venomously. 

Mr. Figgins subsided on the nearest chair. 
The question startled him because it was the 
direct echo of his own. He looked up at the 
figure of the now dominant Mrs. Cushion, 
and regretfully decided that she wasn’t drunk 
after all. 

“ I’ve called here,” said Mr. Figgins im¬ 
portantly, in an endeavour to recapture his 
lost sense of dignity, “ in order to have a word 
with Mr. Randal Frere.” 

“ Lots of people I know want to have a 
word with Mr. Randal Frere, and I’m one of 
them.” 

Mrs. Cushion, after all her trials and 
anxieties, was determined to take it out of 
someone, and heaven seemed to have deliv- 

247 



A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

ered this fat fussy little creature into her 
hands for her peculiar delectation; she luxuri¬ 
ated in this new freedom to give rein to her 
tongue. 

“ And some of them have been here this 
morning!” 

Mr. Figgins again forgot to preserve his 
air of disdain; he leaned forward eagerly. 

“ A young woman among them?” 

Mrs. Cushion nodded her head, and then 
shook it disapprovingly; no spoken condem¬ 
nation of the young woman in question could 
have been more eloquent or more complete. 

“ What was she like?” 

It was Mr. Figgins’s turn to receive a stare 
of disapproval; but he had to pretend not to 
notice it. 

“ Oh, about a third your age and a quarter 
your size.” 

“ This is insufferable!” cried Mr. Figgins, 
and got up and walked towards the door. 
Mrs. Cushion watched him grimly; she knew 
that he would turn back; his curiosity would 
have to tolerate her impertinence. 

“ And there was a man,” continued Mrs. 
Cushion amiably. She was really rather en¬ 
joying herself; it wasn’t often that she had 
the whip hand over anyone. 

“ What was his name?” 

“ I wasn’t introduced to him.” 


248 


MORNING IN DUKE STREET 


Mr. Figgins waved aside this further im¬ 
pertinence; and Mrs. Cushion, for the sake 
of seeing what effect the announcement might 
have, added: 

“ I think he was a Mr. Jobb.” 

Mr. Figgins plunged the folds of his chin 
into his collar; this new revelation wanted 
some thinking out; for the moment he was 
absolutely baffled. 

“ And the name of the young lady?” he 
rapped out suddenly, hoping to take her by 
surprise. 

“ I don’t know,” muttered Mrs. Cushion 
stolidly; she wasn’t going to commit herself in 
this direction before she knew where she 
stood. 

Mr. Figgins regarded her steadily; he 
knew that she was keeping something back 
from him; her denial had been too emphatic 
to be sincere. He took out his pocket-book 
and withdrew the loose one-pound notes and 
placed them in the centre of the table. 

“ Now,” he whispered dramatically, “ tell 
me all you know!” 

“ There’s not much to tell,” whined Mrs. 
Cushion. Never before had her rectitude 
been put to so stern a test; and it seemed such 
a shame not to take the old fool’s money. . . . 
Mr. Figgins edged the notes towards her, and 
her eyes moved with them. 


249 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

“ Quickly,” breathed Mr. Figgins. “ Be¬ 
fore I change my mind!” And then, because 
no response was forthcoming, slowly crushed 
them in his large white hand. 

In this agonising moment Mrs. Cushion 
bravely compromised with her own soul. She 
grabbed at the notes, and faltered: 

“ I don’t know her real name, but I do 
know that she’s coming to stay here. She’s 
got my key!” 

Without another word nor any heed for 
Mrs. Cushion’s half-fainting condition, Mr. 
Figgins grabbed his hat and fled from the 
room. His car was waiting for him. He 
had rolled up in it because he had not been 
at all sure what sort of reception he might 
receive at the hands of Mr. Randal Frere; 
and his chauffeur was a stout fellow in any 
emergency. . . . The man saw that the great 
Figgins was in a hurry and had the door open 
ready for him. 

“ To Hampstead, quick as you can!” 

The man was back at the wheel before the 
final word of this injunction had dropped 
from Mr. Figgins’s pallid lips. It was the 
first time that he had driven over to Hamp¬ 
stead in his own car; he had thought it best 
that his establishment at W. i should remain 
in complete ignorance of this other little 
menage . But this morning he was too dis- 

250 


MORNING IN DUKE STREET 


traught to care for such matters of prudence; 
he was overwhelmed by those feelings of sus¬ 
picion and dread that now encompassed his 
whole outlook on life; and the nearer he 
approached Hampstead the more acute they 
became. When the chauffeur drew up in 
Church Street to ask for further directions 
he almost gave instructions to turn back; it 
seemed foolish to run after bad news. But 
there, uncertainty was the worst state of all. 
... He moaned out something about the first 
to the right and a house on the left. 

The eternal Amy opened the door. There 
was no hint of disaster on her passionless face, 
and a trembling hope sprang up within his 
breast. He walked inside, but Amy made 
no attempt to take his hat and his coat. In¬ 
stead she handed him an envelope, addressed 
to himself in Christina’s handwriting. He 
tore it open, read it at one gulp, and allowed 
it to flutter to the floor. 

“ She’s gone!” he cried wailingly, as if 
there were no other soul left on earth to share 
his grief. “ And I gave her everything— 
everything! ” 

His head dropped and his hands fell to his 
side, as though life were momentarily extinct 
within him; and Amy, who had picked up 
Christina’s note of farewell, had not the heart 
to give it back to him. 


251 


CHAPTER XIII 


RENCONTRE 

HP HE letter had arrived by that evening’s 
post, after being forwarded from an 
address in the country. It was an unsigned 
communication; but Randal, from a long 
acquaintance with Mrs. Cushion’s washing- 
bills, had at once recognised her handwriting. 
Nor was the communication intended to be 
anonymous; its contents sufficiently identified 
the writer, and it was merely Mrs. Cushion’s 
natural diffidence that restrained her from 
observing the usual formalities of correspond¬ 
ence. The message, scrawled on an exces¬ 
sively thin and unclean sheet of notepaper, 
read: “ A young woman has been to the flat 
calling herself your wife, and made me give 
her the key and went out with Mr. Jobb, 
I think.—P.S. She says she means to wait 
for you.” 

Randal, with both feet on the mantelshelf, 
had given about two hours’ thought to this 
highly condensed narrative. For three days 
he had not emerged from the flat in Chelsea; 
but the menace from Christina was only partly 
responsible for this voluntary seclusion; he 
wanted rest and time to think things over. 
Godfrey’s disappearance threatened to bring 
matters to a head between himself and Mar- 


252 


RENCONTRE 


jorie, and he wasn’t at all prepared to take 
any drastic step. In fact he had come to the 
depressing conclusion that he had never been 
so happy with Marjorie as when her husband 
was present; on such occasions it was always 
possible to dream how delightful it would be 
to have her all to himself. During the last 
three days he had spent long hours alone with 
Marjorie, and the experience, now that the 
ever-present threat of interruption was re¬ 
moved, had proved somewhat disappointing. 
It was partly her own fault. In the old days 
she had talked incessantly about her husband, 
despite the fact that Godfrey had been extraor¬ 
dinarily considerate in keeping well out of 
their way; and she had never left off grum¬ 
bling about his refusal to relinquish the pill 
business, although Randal, with justifiable 
anxiety, had always been careful to point out 
that Mrs. Godfrey Jobb, if she wished to con¬ 
tinue to cut a dashing figure before the world, 
would still be dependent on the sales of Jobb’s 
Hepatic Pilules for some time to come. 

When Godfrey left the flat Randal had 
looked forward to a surcease of these objurga¬ 
tions; instead they had increased in ferocity. 
Now that he had actually gone, Marjorie was 
not quite sure whether she had ever wanted 
him to go; after all their years of married life 

253 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


she regarded his flight in the nature of an 
insult; moreover, he had left them both 
financially stranded. Where the money was 
to come from for the upkeep of herself, the 
flat, and Randal was a most unpleasant prob¬ 
lem. Her literary activities on the social side 
were not merely unremunerative; they were 
enormously expensive. Photographers had 
not paid her for the privilege of photograph¬ 
ing her; interviewers had not paid her for the 
privilege of interviewing her; the editors who 
had made her a newspaper topic had not paid 
her for the privilege of talking about her. In 
fact, a small army of people appeared to have 
made money out of Mrs. Godfrey Jobb and 
her theories, although Mrs. Godfrey Jobb her¬ 
self was not a penny the better off. Of course, 
even at ninepence a copy, she was able to look 
forward to a pretty handsome cheque in pay¬ 
ment of her royalties on the sale of several 
thousand copies of The Revolt of Eve; but 
she was due to wait another eight or nine 
months for that cheque, and it was not until 
the day following Godfrey’s departure, when 
the financial position became immediately 
acute, that Randal had prevailed upon her to 
write off to the publishers for something on 
account. Randal had suggested that she 
should ask for two hundred and fifty pounds, 
254 


RENCONTRE 


but she had preferred to leave the amount to 
their good-nature. He had further suggested 
that it was about time that she got down to 
her next book; but on this point he had found 
her tearfully obdurate. She had scolded him 
for his lack of feeling, and asked him how it 
was possible for her to concentrate on any 
such work until she knew what had happened 
to the errant Godfrey. She had then wept 
bitterly on his shoulder. . . . 

This particular encounter had taken place 
after breakfast that morning; he had not seen 
her since; and Randal planted his feet yet 
more firmly on the mantelshelf as he 
attempted to grapple with the dual problem 
presented by Marjorie and Christina. For 
Christina had suddenly become something 
more to him than a nuisance and a menace; 
he found to his surprise that his softer emo¬ 
tions were disturbed when he began to think 
about her seriously. He dragged Mrs. 
Cushion’s note from his pocket and again 
read it. The mere brevity of it fascinated 
him because he was able to create in his 
mind the scene it so badly narrated. He 
knew that no woman on earth, other than 
Christina, could have made the faithful Mrs. 
Cushion give up her key; he knew that the 
interview between them must have surprised 

255 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

and scandalised Mrs. Cushion out of her wits. 
. . . But what he most emphatically did not 
understand was this mention of Mr. Jobb. 
How it had come about that his wife should 
be consorting with Godfrey more than baffled 
him; it disconcerted and annoyed him; he 
felt that it was all wrong and unconscionable. 
He had no very high opinion of Godfrey; his 
wife had so thoroughly extinguished hirji that 
he had ceased to have more than a nominal 
existence; and he revolted at the idea that 
Christina should have anything to do with 
him. It was positively indecent; and he even 
began to wonder whether he might not be, 
even at this late hour, a little jealous of his 
own wife. He damned her faintly; he never 
would be free of her; and he wasn’t at all 
sure now whether he wanted to be free of 
her; his beautiful and once adored Christina 
was just about the most exasperating woman 
that ever lived. And if Mrs. Cushion’s post¬ 
script meant anything she intended to run him 
to earth. “ She says she means to wait for 
you. ...” On the doorstep? 

“Hell!” muttered Randal, and looked at 
his watch. 

It was not yet eleven o’clock and Marjorie 
would probably be another hour yet. He 
was beginning to feel rather lonely. He had 
256 


RENCONTRE 


had very little to do all day, and Marjorie had 
departed in a sulky mood; and she could be 
so delightful to him when she ceased to harp 
on the subject of her wretched husband. He 
felt that he needed to be consoled for all the 
afflictions of his spirit; and Marjorie was the 
only woman on earth who could offer him 
that consolation. He could hope for none 
of it from Christina; he shuddered to think 
what her comments would be when he did 
come within reach of her lambent tongue; 
he grew hot all over at the thought of that 
inevitable hour. . . . No, he counted upon 
Marjorie for a respite from all such trials and 
adversities, and it was not unreasonable of 
him to expect it. Before Godfrey and Chris¬ 
tina had so unwarrantably interfered with 
their private affairs they had certainly been in 
love with each other, and might still be, even 
after three days of love in aloneness. . . . 

Why didn’t she come home? It was now 
nearly midnight, and she rarely stayed out 
so late when he was not accompanying her. 
The thought occurred to him that she might 
already have come home and gone straight 
to bed without saying good-night to him; 
perhaps she had not forgiven him for the 
gentle insistence he had displayed in his little 
lecture that morning on the necessity of get- 

257 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

ting down to some real work. He had worked 
hard enough to make her what she was; and 
the least she could do was to try to sustain 
that reputation he had created for her. He 
grew more and more impatient, and not less 
exasperated with Marjorie than he had been 
with Christina half an hour before. He 
groaned over Marjorie, and darker thoughts 
began to flit through his brain. So far their 
relations had been impeccable on the purely 
physical side; and now, under his present bur¬ 
den of depression, he wondered whether this 
might not be the cause of that deplorable 
position he now occupied in Mr. Godfrey 
Jobb’s household. He was tied up with Mar¬ 
jorie; he didn’t feel that he could break away, 
even if he had wanted to: and why? Be¬ 
cause of that accursed mystery of the flesh! 
He knew that he would never have any rest 
until he had penetrated it, and had done 
with it. . . . The damnable nuisance of it all! 
He paced up and down his room with an ever¬ 
growing impatience of the whole business of 
life; he was ruthless, weary, sickened . . . 
and still Marjorie had not returned. 

Some time after midnight he heard a taxi 
draw up in the street below and a man’s voice 
calling out good-bye. It was Marjorie at 
last, and he waited to see if she would give her 
258 


RENCONTRE 


usual thump on his door and bid him a cheery 
good-night. He listened for her steps, but 
not another sound reached his ears; she had 
gone straight to her room. He was deter¬ 
mined to see her and to have it out with her, 
one way or the other; and he opened the door 
of his room and stepped outside. Her own 
door was only half-closed and he walked 
towards it. 

“ Marjorie!” 

“ Yes?” 

Her voice was harsh, almost surly; he 
hardly recognised it. Angrily he pushed back 
the door. She was sitting in front of her 
dressing-table and leaning over it, with both 
her arms extended among the boxes and 
brushes; she was listlessly watching his move¬ 
ments in the glass. As he crossed the room 
she rose from her chair and turned to face 
him. He had never seen such a look in her 
eyes; they were hostile, bitter, insolent. 
When he was near to her she held up both 
her hands and waved him back, and he 
stopped dead. His lips parted; but he was 
too astounded to speak; this woman was an 
absolute stranger to him. 

“I’ve seen Godfrey!” she cried, gripping 
the back of the chair with her hands. 

“ My God!” groaned Randal, and thought, 

259 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

“ Godfrey again. ...” He smiled wearily, 
and his smile seemed to incense her. “ Is that 
all?” 

“ No, it isn’t!” she flamed. “ He was with 
a woman!” 

Randal opened his eyes questioningly and 
quietly sat down in an armchair beside the 
dressing-table; her flashing words had served 
to steady him; the horizon of his thoughts 
had suddenly taken on a wider scope. . . . 
And when he looked up at Marjorie he saw 
the living shadow of Christina hovering in 
the background. 

“ What sort of woman?” he asked casually. 

“ Oh, just any sort of woman,” said Mar¬ 
jorie with a fine show of contempt. 

“ Then why worry?” 

There was a hint of malice in his voice; he 
was annoyed that anybody, even Marjorie, 
should refer to Christina as just any sort of 
woman. Most emphatically she was not just 
any sort of woman; she was utterly different 
from the average run of women, and better 
than most. She might be an impossible crea¬ 
ture to live with; but Christina had her good 
points, and in face of Marjorie’s scathing 
declaration he felt that he had possibly under¬ 
rated them during her short tenure of office 
as his wife. He met Marjorie’s frown with a 
260 


RENCONTRE 


look of equanimity that moved her to a sud¬ 
den outburst of wrath. 

“You don’t care if I am humiliated!” she 
cried. “ And I haven’t told you everything 
yet!” 

Hatred gleamed in her eyes; she looked as 
if she wanted to shake him; and he drew back 
in his chair, wondering what on earth was 
coming next. There was something at the 
back of her mind that she would let fly at 
him at any moment. He tried to temporise, 
and wished he had kept out of her way until 
the morning, by which time she might have 
cooled down. 

“ For the Lord’s sake, Marjorie,” he urged 
her, “ be reasonable about it all. Poor old 
Godfrey must do something with his time, 
and it doesn’t follow that he’s up to any harm 
with this woman, whoever she is.” 

“ But he said he was going into the coun¬ 
try!” 

Randal shrugged his shoulders, and. re¬ 
marked: “ He may have changed his mind. 
Don’t be too hard on the poor chap.” 

“ But he told the people at the office that 
he was going into the country, and they’ve not 
seen him for three days. I’ve rung them up 
^to find out.” 

“ Then I think it was damned indiscreet of 

261 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

you, my dear,” commented Randal gruffly. 

“ But that’s not all!” 

She blurted out the words venomously, 
almost triumphantly, and Randal crouched 
back in his chair in the expectation that she 
might suddenly decide to assault him. He 
was poignantly reminded of Christina: all 
women were very much alike when they were 
thoroughly wound up. . . . 

“ He introduced me to her!” 

“ Good God!” shouted Randal, jumping to 
his feet and clenching both his hands. “ As 
what?” 

“ Mrs. Randal Frere.” 

The scorn in her voice scorched him; he 
would never have believed that her lips could 
be so cruel; and she waited for him, disdain¬ 
fully, to take up her challenge. 

“ I’m sorry, Marjorie,” he said, hardly 
above a breath. “ But I couldn’t tell you 
about her; and it didn’t seem necessary; I 
haven’t lived with her for nearly three years. 
She’s a most awfully difficult person to get on 
with.” 

“ Godfrey didn’t appear to think so.” 

“ Perhaps he wanted to annoy you,” sug¬ 
gested Randal, now thankful that Godfrey 
had again become the topic of conversation. 

“ You’re a cad to make any such sugges- 


262 


RENCONTRE 


tions!” stormed Marjorie. “ I consider that 
you’ve treated me abominably.” 

“ Women always say that when it’s all 
over,” muttered Randal morosely. 

They faced each other squarely, and Ran¬ 
dal, despairing of further argument, tried to 
catch her in his arms; he had a brutal desire 
to crush her into some sort of submission; it 
seemed the only dignified thing he could do. 
Her arms shot out and sent him staggering 
into the depths of the armchair. 

“Damnation!” he growled, when the breath 
returned to his body. “What is the use of 
kicking up all this fuss? Who’s upsetting 
you? Is it me, or is it your husband?” 

“ Both of you!” shrieked Marjorie. 

“ For heaven’s sake keep control of your 
voice!” He took out his handkerchief and 
brushed it across his lips. “This is awful,” 
he muttered to himself. 

“ You don’t care” she whimpered. 

“ If you start to cry, Marjorie, I’ll jump 
clean through the window.” 

“ A lot of good that would do!” 

Randal looked at her very sternly, com¬ 
posedly, resignedly. 

“ I think,” he said, “you are the most 
ungrateful woman that ever walked the face 
of the earth.” 


263 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

“ What do you mean?” 

“ I mean,” he continued, “that if it hadn’t 
been for me there never would have been a 
Mrs. Godfrey Jobb.” He paused ominously. 
“ Who do you think has made you?” he 
went on. “ Who built up your reputation for 
you? Who poured out an everlasting stream 
of silly gossip about you? Who got you 
photographed, paragraphed, interviewed, 
talked about? Tell me that!” 

He spoke with a rising excitement; he had 
at last got off the defensive, and he was piti¬ 
less in his rage. 

“ I’m not ungrateful,” she protested. “But 
you couldn’t have done all this if there 
hadn’t been something to work on.” 

“ If you’re referring to that book of yours, 
God help us all!” And having made this 
satisfying pronouncement he stretched him¬ 
self full-length in his chair, and sighed with 
relief. 

“You are a cad,” said Marjorie very quietly. 
“ And I mean it this time.” 

He heard her voice through the haze of his 
contentment, and it brought him back to his 
senses. His bout of fury had spent itself, and 
he was astounded to realise what he had said. 

“ I’m sorry, Marjorie,” he murmured. “ It 
was beastly of me, I know. I forgot myself. 
264 


RENCONTRE 


IVe had an awful day of it, what with one 
thing and another.” He pulled himself to his 
feet. “It must have been nerves,” he added 
penitently. “ Won’t you let me kiss you?” 

“ It’s too late,” she replied, drawing away 
from him. “I think IVe come back to my 
senses too. I’m tired of being famous; tired 
of being paragraphed, photographed, inter¬ 
viewed and talked about. I just want to be 
myself again.” She gave him a mournful little 
smile. “ And now you’d better go.” 

“ I suppose so,” said Randal, thrusting his 
hands into his pockets and staring gloomily at 
the carpet. “ Perhaps you’ll feel better in the 
morning.” 

“ But of the same mind, Randal.” 

He grunted, and stole a glance at her. The 
look of hostility had gone from her eyes, and 
she was watching him quietly, and not un¬ 
kindly. But she had suddenly become aloof 
from him; he felt that they might easily have 
been complete strangers to each other. 

“ You know, Marjorie,” he said reflectively, 
“there’s something awfully decent about you, 
really,” and with this epitaph on his lips, and 
without further leave-taking, left the room. 

Back in his own room Randal threw himself 
into a chair in front of the gas fire and darkly 
surveyed the day’s events. Everything had 

265 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


gone wrong, and he hardly knew whether to 
be most incensed with himself, or Marjorie, or 
Christina. He had the fairness to absolve 
Godfrey from any responsibility in the matter; 
it was surprising that he hadn’t cleared off 
before; but he didn’t like the idea of his being 
mixed up with Christina. It was Christina’s 
doing, of course. She had attached herself to 
Godfrey; she had put a plan of campaign of 
her own into operation; but what this plan 
might be was more than he could understand. 
He grew more and more restless; paced up 
and down the room for the second time that 
evening; continually glanced at his bed, and 
turned away from it in disgust; he was now 
too thoroughly wide-awake to hope for sleep. 
He began to hate the atmosphere of the flat 
and everything in it; the mere proximity of 
Marjorie oppressed him; she herself had 
broken the spell she had cast over him during 
the past crowded weeks. He was discon¬ 
certed by the surprising turn their last meet¬ 
ing had taken, and felt that he had come out 
of it badly. She had called him a cad, and he 
had to admit that he had behaved like one. 
He had made not the least attempt to 
humour her at a moment when, quite obvi¬ 
ously, she had required very careful handling. 
He cursed himself for a clumsy fool. She had 

266 


RENCONTRE 


dismissed him, both as lover and servant. It 
was with something of a shock that he realised 
that, nominally, he had been all along her 
paid servant. Press agent for the famous 
Mrs. Godfrey Jobb! And he had flattered 
himself that she was devotedly attached to 
him, and likely to remain so, indefinitely 
.... He had been nothing more than an inci¬ 
dent in her public career, and now that she 
had set her face against it he was to be 
banished from existence and from memory! 
He was exasperated at the recollection of that 
mournful kind little smile she had given him, 
almost akin to pity... .She wanted her hus¬ 
band again, and was prepared to relinquish 
all her hopes and dreams, merely because he 
had dared to find consolation for his loneliness 
in the society of a chic and very engaging 
young woman. It was a detail that she hap¬ 
pened to be his wife. Mrs. Randal Frere as 
such, and for all practical purposes, had 
ceased to exist nearly three years before. 
This was a woman’s reason for a quarrel; 
the authoress of that delightfully subversive 
extravaganza, The Revolt of Eve, was actu¬ 
ally the most conventional of females; she 
was like all other women, and all women were 
alike. ... He fumed at the thought that she 
proposed to undo all his work. In a few 


267 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


months’ time the world would have forgotten 
Mrs. Godfrey Jobb and her theories for the 
rejuvenation of human society, merely be¬ 
cause she refused to sit down and attempt 
to turn out some more nonsense in a similar 
strain.. . .Within half an hour he had suc¬ 
ceeded in convincing himself that he was the 
most injured man that ever fallen a victim 
to a woman’s ingratitude. And at this last 
moment she had eluded him, even as Christina 
had always eluded him. Women were the 
curse of his life; he had never been so happy 
as when he had lived alone in his bachelor 
apartments, with only Mrs. Cushion, who 
didn’t count, to interfere with him. 

“ Damnation take them all!” he cried, and 
put on his hat and his coat and crept out into 
the night. 

He was going back to his tiny flat in the 
Adelphi; he was going home, home. ... The 
thought of doing so came to him as an inspira¬ 
tion; it brought relief to mind and body. 
For weeks past he had ignored the existence 
of Duke Street; and now, within the space of 
a few minutes, he had become obsessed by a 
desire to enjoy its peace and quiet. What he 
wanted was freedom from interference, with 
only himself to please; and he would get it 
there. He flattered himself that he knew how 


268 


RENCONTRE 


to manage Mrs. Cushion; she wasn’t an un¬ 
known quantity; she wouldn’t turn and rend 
him at the moment when he was most in need 
of consolation. ... To his astonishment he 
found himself looking forward to greeting 
Mrs. Cushion again, and his saucepans, and 
the combination lounge-bed: pleasant land¬ 
marks, all of them, in a peaceful life. That 
very night he would take up a volume of 
Stephen’s Commentaries and purge his soul 
by reading aloud a selection of its most 
sonorous passages. There was one in partic¬ 
ular that began . .. But he was back in Duke 
Street, standing on the edge of the pavement 
and staring with a bewildered look on his face 
at a light shining from the uppermost win¬ 
dows of the building in front of him. 

Momentarily he believed that he must have 
mistaken his place of residence; but he re¬ 
membered too well the iron gate that led to 
it, and the gate was still there, within three 
feet of his nose; and there was none other 
like it in Duke Street. It was his room from 
which the light was shining; someone was in 
occupation of it, an intruder in his ancient 
home. ... Mrs. Cushion had written: “She 
says she means to wait for you.” And she had 
carried out her threat! 

“ Good Lord!” he gasped, and wrenched 

269 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

aside the gate and leapt up the winding stair¬ 
case. 

On the top landing he paused. Not a 
murmur came from his own room, and had it 
not been for a streak of light at the foot of the 
door he would have expected to find it vacant 
and desolate. He fumbled for his key, and 
the familiar feel of it, and the knowledge that 
he was about to use it, gave him a little thrill 
of delight even in face of the terrific possibili¬ 
ties that lay behind the door. He unlocked 
and opened it almost in one movement, flung 
it back on its hinges, and launched himself 
on the room. 

“ Randal, darling /” 

Christina rose, a lovely apparition, from 
beneath a silken quilt that enwrapped herself 
and the wayward mysteries of the combina¬ 
tion lounge-bed. Several half-opened trunks 
and suit-cases lay scattered around her, a 
huge piece of tapestry overwhelmed the table, 
and a handsome Chinese vase occupied a posi¬ 
tion of isolation on the once crowded mantel¬ 
shelf. 

“ What the hell does this mean, Chris¬ 
tina?” 

“ That I’m as lucky as ever. I never 
thought you’d come back so soon.” 

Randal glared at her. In any crisis Chris- 
270 


RENCONTRE 


tina’s imperturbability always had induced in 
him a feeling of utter helplessness; she refused 
ever to be abashed; and although he might 
fume and fret internally he never could give 
audible expression to his indignation; she 
paralysed him with her damnable sweetness 
and gentleness. 

“ What are you doing here?” 

“Reading, please!” And she held up a 
book in her hand as if she were a small child 
answering her teacher. 

“ You are God’s most exasperating crea¬ 
ture,” said Randal ferociously, finding a 
momentary refuge in sheer violence. 

“ You don’t appear to be very pleased to 
see me.” 

She pulled up the quilt to her chin and 
wagged her head at him reprovingly. 

“ For two and a half years you’ve not been 
near me,” said Randal, and already a note of 
docility was creeping into his voice. “ And 
now you suddenly take it into your head to 
turn up again without a word of warning and 
collar my bed-” 

“Yours — and mine,” murmured Chris¬ 
tina. “ It’s a wife’s duty to cleave to her 
husband.” 

“ And how long has it taken you to discover 
that?” 


271 



A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

“ About two and a half years.” 

“ If you’re not careful, Christina,” growled 
Randal, “ there’ll be a tragedy in Duke Street 
to-night.” 

Christina mockingly uncovered her lovely 
throat. 

“ If you’re going to indulge in cheap melo¬ 
drama, Christina-” 

“ Kiss me, husband!” 

Randal gave her another glare, removed a 
collection of her garments from the solitary 
armchair, sat himself firmly in it, and deter¬ 
minedly crossed his legs. 

“ Now,” he said, thrusting forward his chin, 
“ we’ve had enough of this nonsense. In the 
first place, where has all this junk come 
from?” 

He glanced round at the trunks and the 
suitcases, the huge piece of tapestry over the 
table, and the handsome Chinese vase on the 
mantelshelf. 

“ Why, Hampstead!” 

“ And what have you been doing at Hamp¬ 
stead?” 

“ Leading a perfectly moral life,” murmured 
Christina very slowly. 

“ Oh!” 

A momentary look of annoyance flashed in 
her eye, and a little tremor passed down Ran- 
272 



RENCONTRE 


dal’s spine; he had no desire to refresh his 
recollection of Christina in one of her really 
angry moods. 

“ The sort of thing you appear to be think¬ 
ing of,” she continued evenly, “ bores me now. 
And no more questions, please!” and gave 
him a forgiving little smile. 

He believed her. During the six months 
he had lived with her he had, in moments of 
stress, and always behind her back, heaped 
upon her every possible objurgation; but 
never had he had occasion to call her a liar. 
The device of the lie was too petty to be in¬ 
cluded in Christina’s armour; she employed 
less puny methods of defensive warfare; and 
he realised that the exclamation of doubt that 
had fallen from his lips was the worst in¬ 
dignity he could have offered her. And he 
was glad to observe that she had let him off 
rather lightly. 

“ Sorry, Christina,” he remarked humbly. 
“ Of course I believe you. But-” 

His voice faded out; he was beginning to 
feel horribly weak; and he was dead tired. 
He could hardly resist the temptation to fling 
himself at the head of her bed and to bury 
his head in the silken quilt that wrapped her 
round. He knew that her arms were waiting 
for him; and what a blessed relief it would 


273 



A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


be to find somewhere to lay his head! His 
eyes rested listlessly on the three volumes of 
Stephen’s Commentaries on the Laws of Eng¬ 
land that loomed on the shelves behind the 
bed; and even as they receded from his 
grasp they seemed to be growing larger and 
larger. . . . 

“ Go on.” 

He heard her low insistent voice as from a 
very great distance, and only when his eyes 
returned to her did he take a fresh grip of 
his mind. 

“ But still I don’t understand why you’ve 
come back.” 

“ I got fed up with Hampstead,” said 
Christina simply. “ So I packed my things, 
and here I am.” 

“ And is that all?” 

Christina gave him a tiny glance of im¬ 
patience, but she didn’t pause in her reply. 

“ No, it isn’t,” she said, with an expansive 
candour. “ I was annoyed to find that you 
were running around with that hideous Mrs. 
Godfrey Jobb.” 

“ She isn’t hideous,” commented Randal, 
with a fine show of unconcern. Secretly he 
was enormously flattered; he would never 
have believed that Christina’s affection for 
him could have been so easily wounded. He 

274 


RENCONTRE 


smiled, a self-satisfied little smile. . . . 

“ Now, Randal,” said Christina sharply, 
“ you needn’t look so pleased as all that. I 
shouldn’t have told you so much if I’d not 
wanted to play fair with you.” 

Almost involuntarily he drew his chair 
towards her; she disarmed him at every turn; 
he was back in those first days of love when 
he had found her irresistible. 

“ And to-morrow,” she said brightly, as if 
she were attempting to remove any remaining 
cause for grievance, “I’ll clear up everything 
before that dear old thing that looks after you 
arrives.” 

He blenched at this reference to the thin 
and ungainly Mrs. Cushion; it was typical of 
Christina’s magnanimity that she should refer 
to her as that dear old thing; but he couldn’t 
help foreseeing the complications that would 
arise when that fiery and jealous soul dis¬ 
covered that she was no longer to control the 
destinies of Duke Street. His face betrayed 
his concern. 

“ You needn’t worry about Mrs. Cushion,” 
said Christina, with her usual uncanny intui¬ 
tion. “ We shan’t be here for long.” 

He sighed, and wondered where on earth 
he would find himself in six months’ time; 
there was no knowing, with a Christina to rule 

275 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

one’s life. She stretched out a hand and laid 
her fingers gently on his arm. 

“ Because, Randal, darling, we’re going to 
start all over again! ” 

“ But-” And again he broke off. 

“ Go on,” she said; but this time her voice 
was a reproach to him. 

“ But where’s the money coming from?” 

“ You silly boy!” she exclaimed gaily. 
“ Don’t you understand that I am going to 
take you in hand? I never thought that you’d 
got very much in you; but I know better now. 
Haven’t you made an enormous success of 
Mrs. Godfrey Jobb?” 

Randal bowed his head; he was amazed 
to find that Marjorie belonged to a time and 
a world already incredibly remote. 

“ And you achieved this success,” continued 
Christina, “with little or no material to work 
on?” 

“ Not very much,” he agreed, with his eyes 
still downcast. Indeed he felt a little 
ashamed of himself and of his complete deser¬ 
tion of Marjorie. After all, there must have 
been something about her.... 

“ Therefore,” continued Christina, “there’s 
no reason at all why you shouldn’t go on with 
similar work for other really big people, and 
make lots and lots of money. Now is there?” 
276 



RENCONTRE 


She grasped his wrist, and her touch fired 
the blood in his veins. 

“ None at all,” he responded dutifully, 
resignedly. It was too late to escape now, 
even if he had wanted to; and he didn’t. 
There was in Christina’s personality a certain 
piquant quality that kept him tingling with an 
ever-unrealised expectation of delights to 
ensue; and she held him still, and in the dim 
regions of his consciousness always had held 
him: this Mrs. Godfrey Jobb, this Marjorie, 
was no more than an episode, now closed and 
forgotten.... He sank to his knees and placed 
both hands on her shoulders and drew down 
her face to the level of his own. The touch 
of her lips was strange, and came as a little 
shock to him, after so many other kisses; and 
even in this swooning moment he saw over¬ 
head, as in a different world to which he 
would no more return, the three sombre sub¬ 
stantial volumes of Stephen’s Commentaries 
on the Laws of England. 

“ But how long is it going to last?” he 
asked her as she closed his eyes with her lips. 
There was a smile in her breath, and he hardly 
caught the whispered answer: 

“ It may be for a month, for a year, for 
more, or for ever! Who knows?” 


277 


CHAPTER XIV 
LETHE 


/ T V HE pale-faced girl in the office at Watling 
Street thoughtfully returned to her posi¬ 
tion behind the counter after replacing the 
telephone receiver on its rest. Every morning 
that week Mrs. Godfrey Jobb had rung up the 
head of the firm, and every morning been told 
that his movements were unknown to the mem¬ 
bers of his staff. All that the pale-faced girl 
could tell her was that his instructions were 
that they should carry on as best they could 
in his absence, and that he would probably 
be away for not more than a week. The 
week was now up, and she had just promised 
Mrs. Jobb that if he returned that morning 
she should be informed immediately. The 
pale-faced girl went on with the sorting of her 
letters. Externally she was calm; internally 
she was in a state of pleasurable excitement. 
For all these years, to the best of her observa¬ 
tion, the married career of Mr. and Mrs. 
Jobb had been distressingly uneventful; no 
domestic storms had disturbed the pure hori¬ 
zon of their love: all of which tended to make 
life exceedingly dull at Watling Street. Even 
Mrs. Godfrey Jobb’s sudden rise to fame had 
failed to provide an enlivening influence; the 
head of the firm, in fact, had adhered as 
278 


LETHE 


strictly as ever to the business routine of his 
life—until this last week, when, with a casual¬ 
ness that had deceived them as to the inner 
significance of the remark, he had informed 
them that he would be away from office for a 
week. The first minor thrill had come to 
them when, the very next day, Mrs. Jobb 
rang them up to ask for his address, which she 
claimed to have mislaid; and their excite¬ 
ment increased in volume when they dis¬ 
covered, as a result of her repeated inquiries, 
that Mr. Jobb had not merely cut off all com¬ 
munication with them but with his wife also; 
and they were both stunned and delighted 
when, two days before, the messenger boy had 
returned to the office with the report that he 
had seen the guv’nor himself strolling across 
Trafalgar Square in broad daylight that very 
morning.. .. What was he doing in London 
at all, with his wife crying out her eyes to see 
him? The cheeks of the pale-faced girl had 
lost something of their pallor at this crisis in 
the history of the fortunes, on tfie domestic 
side, of Jobb’s Hepatic Pilules, Ltd. 

“ Good-morning!” 

There always was an unsightly gap between 
the lips of the pale-faced girl, and this gap 
perceptibly widened as she slowly realised that 
the shadow that had fallen across her letters, 
and the voice she had heard, alike belonged 

279 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

to the head of the firm. He had returned as 
casually as if he had just been across to Can¬ 
non Street for his morning coffee. And she 
hadn’t caught a glimpse of him! Never had 
she been so annoyed with herself for having 
applied her eyes, if not her mind, to her work 
with such a calamitous assiduity. She flung 
on the counter the pile of letters she held in 
her hand, went up to the door of the inner 
room, and furiously rapped it. There was no 
response. She went on rapping it: still no 
response. Her study of the less salubrious 
columns of the Sunday Press justified her 
indulgence in the worst possible surmises. Of 
course she would have heard if he had shot 
himself, and not a murmur had come from 
the room; but there was always the chance 
that he had taken poison.... She opened the 
door, tried to blurt out Mrs. Jobb’s urgent 
message, and nearly choked herself in the 
attempt. Mr. Jobb was there all right, and 
very much alive. He was seated with his 
back to her and his feet on the table, and 
appeared to be in a state of demented exhila¬ 
ration. He was waving a piece of paper in 
one hand and a large blue pencil in the other. 
He presented a spectacle that was indecent 
in its childishness; and timidly, and diplo¬ 
matically, she closed the door. It was a shock 
for her to learn that a staid business 
280 


man 


LETHE 

could ever misbehave himself in this fashion. 

“ Good-morning!” 

The handle of the door closed with a click 
as she turned to face this new intruder; her 
nerves were a little on edge, and this second 
salutation quite startled her. She examined 
the visitor. He was a short fat gentleman 
with a pleasant face. 

“ I’ve called to see Mr. Jobb.” 

“ Name, please.” 

“ Figgins.” 

“ Have you got an appointment?” 

Mr. Figgins glared at her so ferociously 
that she hastily turned to the door again and 
gave it a thump that nearly knocked in one of 
its panels. This time she got an answer. 

“ Tell him to wait,” said Mr. Jobb, and 
continued his examination of a sheet of 
figures. 

The ten minutes that followed her delivery 
of this message extinguished from her cheeks 
what colour was left in them. She remem¬ 
bered this Figgins now; she had imagined that 
he was a most important visitor and not at all 
the sort of person one could ask to wait; and 
he didn’t appear to think so either. She had 
never seen a man quite so angry as this Mr. 
Figgins. The pleasantness of his face had 
faded out, and its many creases were writh¬ 
ing in the agony that contorted his mind. 


281 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

He made several attempts to address her, 
and only halted on the very brink of violence. 
He was so obviously a visitor of importance 
that she became afflicted by a doubt that Mr. 
Jobb might have mistaken his august name, 
with unthinkable consequences to himself and 
the firm; and she was relieved to note that 
Mr. Jobb did not exhibit any particular per¬ 
turbation when he flung open his door and 
urbanely remarked: 

“ Ah, my dear Figgins, come in!” 

Mr. Figgins did not return the greeting, but 
went in and sat down, without waiting for an 
invitation. He tried to assume a fierceness of 
expression, but only succeeded in looking 
exceedingly glum. 

“ And what can I do for you?” 

Mr. Figgins held up a large white hand; it 
was a gesture reminiscent of his earlier on¬ 
slaught, but now it was almost a plea for 
mercy. 

“ I have come to see you to-day, Mr. Jobb, 
on a very delicate matter.” 

Mr. Figgins spoke in so quiet a tone that 
Godfrey’s exuberance of spirit was momen¬ 
tarily hushed. He was disappointed that this 
high priest of finance should so easily have 
succumbed to adversity; it detracted from the 
joy of his triumph. 

282 


LETHE 


“ I take it,” said Godfrey, simulating a 
laugh, “that you’ve come to see me about 
those wonderful pills of yours.” 

Mr. Figgins mournfully shook his head, and 
made a last despairing effort to lift his large 
white hand to that proud eminence it was 
accustomed to occupy. It failed dismally; 
the hand fluttered to his knee. 

“ No,” he murmured brokenly, “nothing at 
all to do with pills. It’s about a young lady I 
befriended.” 

“Her name?” demanded Godfrey, giving 
him a rapid glance. 

“Sometimes she was called Miss Figgins,” 
slowly recited the lachrymose Figgins. “ But 
she was generally known as Christina. I 
understand that you met her at an address in 
Duke Street.” 

“ And if I did?” 

“ I want to know if you can tell me what 
she is doing.” 

“ Anything more?” 

“ Did she say anything about—Hamp¬ 
stead?” 

Godfrey drew a very deep breath; his 
mind went back to an interview in this same 
room with this same visitor weeks before; he 
still recollected the first words that had fallen 
from the visitor’s lips at that interview; he 

283 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

exhumed them from the grave of memory. 

“ I am sorry to say, Mr. Figgins, that I have 
some very bad news to communicate to you.” 

Mr. Figgins meekly bowed his head. 

“ Certainly I have the pleasure of this 
young lady’s acquaintance; certainly she told 
me a great deal about Hampstead—but she 
never mentioned you. I don’t suppose she 
felt that it was necessary.” 

Mr. Figgins gripped the arms of the chair 
in which he was sitting with such a painful 
tenacity that Godfrey for a moment had it in 
his heart to take pity on the man, and as 
quickly hardened it. The arrival of Mr. Fig¬ 
gins in that office had heralded a series of mis¬ 
fortunes from which he was only now recover¬ 
ing, and Mr. Figgins’s business activities had 
been designed to effect his ruin; even his 
private affairs had subsequently been involved 
with his own. The man wasn’t deserving of 
either grace or pity; a sharp lesson would do 
him a great deal of good. 

“ I have paid one visit to Duke Street,” 
said Mr. Figgins plaintively. “ It wasn’t 
very pleasant, and I don’t propose to go 
again.” 

“ No, I don’t advise you to do so.” 

“ Because?” 

There was in Mr. Figgins’s query a note 
284 


LETHE 


of eagerness and pathos that again caused 
Godfrey a moment's compunction; but he 
responded brutally: 

“ I don’t think you are likely to meet with 
the approval of her husband.” 

“ Her husband!” 

“A certain Mr. Randal Frere,” added 
Godfrey. “I don’t love the man myself; 
and if I were you I should take very good care 
to keep out of his way.” 

Mr. Figgins slowly rose from his seat and 
tottered towards the door. He was like a 
man in a dream, and Godfrey involuntarily 
put out his hand to catch him.... At the door 
he paused, and his head drooped disconso¬ 
lately and his eyes half closed. 

“ She was a good girl, was Christina,” he 
sobbed, and passed out. 

Godfrey dropped into his chair and his 
hands fell to his sides. The interview had 
proved to be utterly unlike anything he had 
anticipated; he had been robbed of his tri¬ 
umph. He had confidently believed that 
Figgins had called in to talk to him about 
pills, and he had looked forward to the discus¬ 
sion ; he had a lot to say to his powerful and 
ruthless rival on the subject of the sale of 
pills. And he had escaped! Godfrey took up 
the sheet of figures on his table and resumed 


285 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


his examination of them; but they were no 
more than a blur on the vision. On the one 
hand he could see a woebegone creature, the 
once terrible Figgins, slowly plodding down 
three flights of rickety stairs; on the other, 
the lissom and the light-hearted Christina, 
gaily descending on Duke Street after her 
flight from Hampstead. The awful contrast 
touched him, hurt him; he clenched his hands 
and his lips, and flew to the door. The pale- 
faced girl caught the briefest of glimpses of 
her usually unemotional employer as he flung 
himself through the door opposite the counter 
and appeared to plunge headlong down the 
stairs. 

Mr. Figgins was almost at street level by 
the time Godfrey reached him. He turned 
and looked up in pitiful amazement. Godfrey, 
who was a step above him, put one hand on 
his shoulder, breathed heavily, and gasped: 

“ Figgins, I’ve never yet succeeded in 
thoroughly hating any man, and, damn it, I 
feel sorry for you!” 

And having performed this errand of mercy, 
and cleared his conscience, climbed the stairs 
again. 

The pale-faced girl waited some time 
before she ventured to give another knock on 
the door; she feared a further inexplicable 
286 


LETHE 


outburst; and when she did summon up 
enough courage to enter the room she was sur¬ 
prised to find the head of the firm sitting 
quietly at his table with no evident mark of 
his recent extraordinary behaviour. 

“Mrs. Jobb asked me-” 

“ Say that I’ll meet her at the club for 
lunch at one o’clock.” 

He wanted a rest before he undertook to 
effect the inevitable reconciliation with his 
wife. How it was to be effected he didn’t yet 
know. He was quite unaware how far her 
information went on the subject of Randal 
and Christina. If it were meagre he didn’t 
propose to amplify it; he at least was willing 
to forget the Randal episode in her auctorial 
career; and the little he knew of Christina 
was enough to tell him that nevermore would 
Randal be allowed to trouble Marjorie. If 
she still intended to figure as a public charac¬ 
ter and to continue with her work, then he 
would go on with his, valiantly and gladly. 
For the first time in his life he was really 
proud to be associated with the old-estab¬ 
lished firm of Jobb’s Hepatic Pilules, Ltd. 

On the sheet of paper in front of him 
appeared the sales figures for Jobb’s Hepatic 
Pilules over a period of one month; they had 
been collected and tabulated during his 

287 



A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


week’s absence from the office; they were the 
cause of that emotional disturbance which 
had so shocked the pale-faced girl. An aston¬ 
ishing lesson was to be drawn from them. 
The appearance of Aunt Mary’s Liver Pills 
on the market had shaken his business to its 
foundations, which were planted in myriads 
of little shops throughout the country; and 
these little shops, and the big stores along with 
them, had refused to lay in more stocks of his 
pills until the public had made up their minds 
which brand they wanted. He didn’t know 
how far the public had succumbed to the 
blandishments of Napoleon and Byron, An¬ 
tony and Cleopatra, and the rest of them; 
but he was dead certain that they hadn’t 
bought the pills these historical personages so 
eloquently sponsored. Because! ... He 
glanced again at the figures before him. At 
the beginning of the month they were still 
down, and so far down that one might have 
confidently predicted the ultimate extinction 
of Jobb’s Hepatic Pilules from the life of a 
pill-loving nation; but the first week showed 
a slight increase, the second a large one, the 
third yet another leap forward, and the fourth 
and last... Really, Godfrey wanted to stand 
on his head to make quite sure that he wasn’t 
seeing these figures upside down! They ex- 
288 


LETHE 


ceeded anything in the many decades of the 
firm’s history; the little shops and the big 
stores were tumbling over one another in 
their efforts to replenish their stocks in face 
of a revived and ever-increasing demand for 
Jobb’s Hepatic Pilules; and the public had 
brushed aside Napoleon and Byron, and An¬ 
tony and Cleopatra in their determination 
to have them. 

Godfrey picked up a copy of a morning 
paper. Aunt Mary’s historical panoramas 
had long ago disappeared from its pages; but 
at the foot of a column, in a corner by itself 
and in no more than an inch of space, there 
still was manifest the agelong refrain: 

JOBB’S HEPATIC PILULES. 

Good for the Liver. 
is. 3d. a Box. 

He smiled; his policy had been justified by 
its results. He had been content to ram home 
into the national consciousness these three 
simple phrases; so that, when people wanted 
pills, they didn’t think of some Napoleonic 
pronunciamento, but of Jobb, plain Jobb. 

“ Excuse me, sir, but if you’re meeting Mrs. 
Jobb at one o’clock ...” 

“Ah, yes!” said Godfrey, glancing at his 
watch. “ I must be off.” 


289 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


He happened to look at the pale-faced 
girl; she was watching him with wondering 
eyes; it was evident that she couldn’t make 
him out at all; he was neither one thing nor 
the other for five minutes at a time that morn¬ 
ing. He laughed outright, and looked so ex¬ 
traordinarily happy that for the moment the 
pale-faced girl thought that he was about to 
embrace her. 

“ Tell everyone,” he said gaily, “that 
there’s to be an all-round five shillings in¬ 
crease in salaries, dating from Monday next, 
to celebrate our triumph over Aunt Mary; 
and ring up Mrs. Meadows and tell her that 
we shall be home for dinner to-night,” and 
made a dash for the door without perceiving 
that the pale-faced girl was on the point of 
fainting away. 

His exhilaration remained unabated 
throughout a joyous taxi ride to the club. 
He didn’t know why he was so happy, and 
never paused to put the question to himself. 
It was enough to know that he had saved 
his business; he wasn’t worrying about Mar¬ 
jorie. He was convinced at the back of his 
mind that she was going to beg his forgive¬ 
ness, and that they would forthwith resume 
their old relations and their former manner 
of life. No more confinement in a third- 
290 


LETHE 


floor flat in Chelsea, within two minutes of 
the nearest bus route; no more Randal; no 
more literary gatherings; no more paragraphs 
and photographs. . . . 

“ Godfrey!” 

He had come upon her in the waiting-room 
before he had realised that he was actually 
on the threshold of what ought to be a tragic 
and tearful meeting; and the tone of her voice 
was one of pained and almost ludicrous sur¬ 
prise. She perceived that he wasn’t happy for 
the joy of seeing her; it was a happiness that 
came from within. 

“ Hullo, my dear! Are you ready for 
lunch?” 

The casualness of this greeting was not 
unintentional on his part; he wanted her to 
understand by it that he was willing to forgo 
any retrospective domestic discussion; but 
she didn’t take it in this way, and a look of 
bewilderment still strained her eyes. 

“ But, Godfrey, you are so happy!” 

“ Well, why not?” 

“ But it’s not just because of seeing me!” 

“ You come along,” said Godfrey, with a 
firm masculine insistence, and gently pushed 
her into the lift. In the drawing-room he 
gave her a seat by the window overlooking 
Piccadilly and the Park; he thought that these 


291 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

external sights and sounds might serve to 
distract her attention from what might other¬ 
wise turn out to be a too poignant inter¬ 
view. 

“ It’s good to see you again,” he remarked; 
and added, with a glance at the leafless trees: 
“The spring will soon be here!” 

“ Godfrey, you’re a heartless brute!” 

He sank back in his chair, crossed his legs, 
folded his arms, and said beseechingly: 

“ For God’s sake, Marjorie, don’t begin!” 

“ But, Godfrey!” 

“ If,” said Godfrey, bringing one hand 
down on his knee with an enormous thump, 
“we’re going to start asking each other ques¬ 
tions, we shall be here all night; and I’ve 
told Mrs. Meadows that we shall be home for 
dinner this evening. That’s right, isn’t it?” 

She nodded her head, and dismally failed to 
smile. Godfrey subjected her to a glance of 
intensest displeasure. 

“ Oh, all right,” he said. “ If you’ve got 
anything on your mind, let’s hear it, and get it 
over.” 

“ How’s the business, Godfrey?” 

“ The business was never better than it is 
now. So far as I am concerned, Figgins, like 
the British Constitution, does not exist. But 
that’s not what you wanted to ask me.” 

292 


LETHE 


She dabbed a handkerchief in her eye, and 
then started nervously to bind it round her 
fingers. 

“It’s that dreadful woman!” she blurted 
out. 

He forbore the remark that he didn’t regard 
her as being at all dreadful, and said very 
evenly : 

“To the best of my knowledge she is, at 
the moment—and for the moment—living 
very happily with her husband,” and again 
turned his eyes in the direction of the leafless 
trees. He knew what was the matter with 
her: she wanted to cry. But he determined 
to risk that, and have done with the matter 
once and for all. 

“ There’s only one question I have to ask 
you, Marjorie. Are you going to write any 
more books?” 

She mournfully shook her head. 

“ Well,” said Godfrey, with a sigh of relief, 
“if you’ve decided on this for my sake I think 
it’s jolly decent of you.” He leaned forward 
eagerly, and after a hurried glance round the 
room, roughly embraced her hand. “ This 
afternoon,” he went on, “you can clear up the 
Chelsea show, so that we can finish with the 
place for good. Have you got enough money 
with you?” 


293 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 


Again she mournfully shook her head. 

“ But what about all those wonderful nine- ' 
pences?” 

After a moment’s hesitation she opened her 
hand-bag and drew out a crumpled letter. 

“ You might as well know everything now,” 
she said under her breath. “ It’s from the 
publishers. Read it.” 

He read: “ Dear Mrs. Jobb, we very much 
regret that we are unable to let you have a 
cheque on account of royalties on the sale of 
your book, The Revolt of Eve. We have to 
date sold only 331 copies. Should this figure 
seem surprisingly low to you, we can only 
suggest that the publicity campaign organised 
on your behalf was so exhaustive in the details 
it supplied of the work in question that the 
reading public, as it were, took the book as 
read. However, in the course of a few months, 
in accordance with the terms of our Agree¬ 
ment, we shall be sending you a cheque for 
an amount in the neighbourhood of £ 11 , being 
royalties due on the sale of the above number 
of copies (at the rate of thirteen to the dozen). 
In conclusion we should like to say that we 
look forward to seeing your next MS., of 
which we entertain the brightest hopes for 
an assured financial success.” 

Godfrey meditatively crushed the letter 
294 


LETHE 


into a tiny ball and threw it into the nearest 
waste-paper basket. 

“ Come and have some lunch, old dear,” 
he said very gently. 

“ But there’s something I must tell you, 
Godfrey! It will always worry me if I don’t.” 

“ I tell you I don’t want to hear any more,” 
he said, lifting his voice, and firmly led her in 
the direction of the door. 

But she did tell him. That night, long 
after he had fallen into a dreamless sleep, he 
was awakened to find her standing over his 
bed. 

“ Godfrey!” 

u What is it? Not Mrs. Meadows again!” 

“ No,” she replied hurriedly. “ You know 
when you asked me if I was going to write any 
more books?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ And when I told you no, you said that 
perhaps I had done it for your sake?” 

“ Yes.” 

“Well, that isn’t quite true.” 

“No?” 

“ You see, Godfrey dear, I tried and tried 
and tried to think of something more to write 
about, and—I couldn’t!” 

“ Oh, that’s all right,” murmured Godfrey, 
falling off to sleep again. 


295 


A COMEDY OF WOMEN 

Mrs. Meadows did not intend to make any 
mistake the next morning. To celebrate the 
return of the family she took particular pains 
to find out just what Mr. Jobb would like for 
his breakfast. Eggs and bacon he had asked 
for; and he got them; and each fried egg was 
as fresh and as perfect as a white little rose¬ 
bud, and each curling rasher lovelier than the 
blossom of the rose. In the train that morn¬ 
ing Godfrey’s copy of the Times lay neg¬ 
lected and unopened on the seat beside him; 
instead, his eyes rested on the green and fleet¬ 
ing fields. Never before on his journeys to 
town had he paused to consider how good 
were these green fields to look upon, after so 
much weariness, how reviving for the soul! 

“ Good - morning —good - morning!” said 
Godfrey, almost before he had put his head 
inside the office. 

“ Good-morning,” was the placid reply 
from the pale-faced girl behind the counter. 


THE END 


296 















